"V.Suresh" wrote:
>
> What do we mean by a 32 bit OS or 64 bit OS?
> Is Linux 32 or 64 bit? What about Windows?
These are definitions of CPU. Ideally they shouldn't mean anything to OS.
There are three types of data types that depend upon the length.
Integer/Long/Pointer commonly referred as ILP. These typically depend upon the
CPU architecture and should be taken care of, when porting across
OS/architecture.
Linux on intel is 32 bit(till itanium ships) and on other platforms like
sun/alpha, it's 64 bits.
Actually windows messed it up nicely with that. Because they continued shipping
real mode products, even when CPU were capable of proteted mode, and continued
legacy of dos for undue long period, the mess of 16bit/32bit API was introduced.
On linux, you just use it. there is no 32 bit/64 bit stuff except for ILP. i.e.
if you write a long to a file on intel linux and try to read it as a long on
alpha linux, you will run into trouble. Just take care of ILP and you are safe.
And there are straightforward programming techniques of doing that.
Shridhar
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