On 12/16/2011 1:17 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
On 2011-12-16 10:10, torhu wrote:
People coming from Linux are accustomed to a running only 64-bit
programs if they have a 64-bit OS. That's simply because Linux is
usually distributed through downloading. To limit the download size,
they leave out the 32-bit versions of libraries. Which means you can't
actually run 32-bit programs without downloading and installing the
packages containing those libraries first. At least that's my
understanding.
This issue doesn't exist on Windows. Probably not on OS X either, but
I'm not too familiar with that system.
Mac OS X has universal binaries, that is, libraries and executables containing
code for multiple architectures. All system libraries bundled with the OS are
compiled (at least) both for 32 and 64bit. This makes it no problem running
either 32 or 64bit applications, the user don't have to know or care.
The Mac "universal" binaries are simply the 32 bit and 64 bit versions
concatenated into one file. It doesn't save on download size.
