On Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 02:28:21AM -0400, Scott Robert Ladd wrote: > I am a tad confused here, so bear with me... > > Okay: I have an Ultra 10, on which I've installed Debian 3.0r0. As I > understand it, the kernel operates in 64-bit mode, while any programs I > write and run operate in 32-bit mode. Is that correct? > > Is there anyway to change user space such that it is 64-bit? > > This came up when I built gcc 3.2; the configure script couldn't figure out > my installation. As it is explained to me by someone in the gcc mailing > list, what I managed to build was a 32-bit version of the compilers, given > that my user space is 32-bit. > > Why isn't user space 64-bit by default? Is it that many GNU/Linux programs > aren't compatible with 64-bit?
You don't want 64bit userspace is very very slow compared to 32bit. The only reason you would want 64bit binaries is if a single program needs to access > 4gigs of memory (note, this has nothing to do with just having > 4gigs of memory). Most programs are compatible with 64bit userspace (hence ia64 and alpha actually working), but that doesn't mean it's appropriate for normal use on a machine that can handle 32bit natively. -- Debian - http://www.debian.org/ Linux 1394 - http://linux1394.sourceforge.net/ Subversion - http://subversion.tigris.org/ Deqo - http://www.deqo.com/
