On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 08:54, Alex Perry wrote:
> Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
>
> > My gripe with it is the pimping of AMD. It's a different class than
> > i386, since there you only have one letter and not the whole name, and
> > historical errors should not prevent us from doing the right thing
> > today. (Else, all linux ports should be renamed to linux-$ARCH, which I
> > don't think they should (pre-multiarch, at least. ;))
> >
>
> My memory tells me that "a64" is the name of an ARM-derived
> architecture. Don't even be tempted.
>
> Currently, if I want to run the architecture, I _have_ to buy the
> processor from AMD. Odd that we want to have the technical name
> indicate what processor you need to acquire in order to get it to work.
>
> The real reason why the current name for the arch is vendor specific is
> because, if you recall, AMD invited Intel to sign up for a vendor
> neutral name that they could both use ... and thereby avoid confusing
> differentiation in the marketplace. Intel refused, which indicates to
> me that Intel _wants_ us to use two different names for the respective
> architectures. If we are going to take vendor preferences into account
> in any way whatsoever, we should take _both_ vendors (the real one with
> products and the virtual one that has only released marketing
> literature) into account ...
>
> I propose that politicizers of this argument take the _correct_ approach
> to _their_ perceived problem:
> 1. Shut up whining until there is a non-AMD processor available
> 2. Read up the documentation on what Intel is going to do different (eg
> execute bit)
> 3. Start a second porting project for whatever Intel's name is at
> release time
> 4. When multiarch comes along, the two will be mostly interoperable anyway
>
> Just another $0.02 ... this is getting expensive ...
> Alex.
> This mail listing should be about working on the problems with porting Debian
> to this architecture, not a continual spam junk of complaining about the name
> of it. AMD came out with the Opteron, it works with both 32 bit and 64 bit
> applications. Give credit where it's due. AMD64, only architecture out there
> currently.
