I'm customizing a new computer.

[E6600]

Originally Posted by chedabob

Whatever you do, don't go with XP 64bit.

Surprising that neither Mac OS X nor GNU/Linux have problems with being 64bit and they've been for quite a while. More surprising is Vista didn't drop 32bit support even though no 32bit computer will be able to run Vista!!

[chedabob]

It's not so much the kernel support, it's the terrible driver support, and some applications don't like WoW64.

[E6600]

Originally Posted by chedabob

Whatever you do, don't go with XP 64bit.

Originally Posted by chedabob

It's not so much the kernel support, it's the terrible driver support, and some applications don't like WoW64.

I was talking about how XP64 lacks application support, it is really frightening

[chedabob]

Linux has no problem because 99.9999% of applications have source code and a recompile with an X64 compile is all that is necessary. OSX has some trouble with Rosetta though.

[E6600]

Originally Posted by chedabob

Linux has no problem because 99.9999% of applications have source code and a recompile with an X64 compile is all that is necessary. OSX has some trouble with Rosetta though.

Well that's because it runs PowerPC applications on Intel Macs. This has nothing to do with our current discussion about 64bit support.

[chedabob]

Originally Posted by E6600

Well that's because it runs PowerPC applications on Intel Macs. This has nothing to do with our current discussion about 64bit support.

Rosetta still emulates an instruction set in the same way WoW64 emulates a 32bit instruction set.

[E6600]

Originally Posted by chedabob

Rosetta still emulates an instruction set in the same way WoW64 emulates a 32bit instruction set.

Why didn't the devs just recompile their programs for the x86-64 if the x86 versions aren't compatible?

Brings me to another thing, if a 32 bit OS can be installed on a 64 bit machine, why can't a 32 bit application be installed on a 64 bit OS?
Doesn't make a lot of sense to me

[chedabob]

Originally Posted by E6600

Why didn't the devs just recompile their programs for the x86-64 if the x86 versions aren't compatible?

Because that involves some kind of effort. A lot of developers get to a point release and then forget about the application.

[E6600]

Originally Posted by chedabob

Because that involves some kind of effort. A lot of developers get to a point release and then forget about the application.

That effort, the process is mostly automated. I had to assemble a program by hand into binary, that was a lot of effort.

[Power666]

Originally Posted by chedabob

Linux has no problem because 99.9999% of applications have source code and a recompile with an X64 compile is all that is necessary. OSX has some trouble with Rosetta though.

Umm... if you consider recompiling things fair under Linux, why not for OS X? That corrects the problems with Rosetta's emulation.

Originally Posted by E6600

Why didn't the devs just recompile their programs for the x86-64 if the x86 versions aren't compatible?

Brings me to another thing, if a 32 bit OS can be installed on a 64 bit machine, why can't a 32 bit application be installed on a 64 bit OS?
Doesn't make a lot of sense to me

Because when a 32 bit program as for a memory address from the operating system, it expects to get 32 bit back and not 64 bits.

There are even more fun things in the 32 bit to 64 bit transition too. The memory space is now flat in x86-64 where there were tons of old arcane tricks dating back to the x86's 8 bit roots under 32 bit mode. The 64 bit mode reduces a lot of headaches but for older programs that were programmed around these issues, it is a compatibility concern.