Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] New keywords for non-Gentoo Linux platforms

[Fabian Groffen <grobian@gentoo.org>]

On 10-10-2008 04:21:23 +0200, Marius Mauch wrote:
> > >> 	amd64-linux
> > >> 	x64-openbsd
> > >> 	x64-solaris
> > > 
> > > Is there a special reason why you're using "x64" instead of "amd64"
> > > in those cases? (IMO x64 is the most stupid name for the x86_64
> > > architecture)
> > 
> > AFAIK, that's not amd64/x86_64, but rather ia64, aka itanic aka
> > itanium. At least, that's how I'd interpret them since I've seen that
> > abbreviation made before, particularly since there's already amd64 in
> > context.
> 
> No, x64 is the marketing name Microsoft made up for x86_64 (aka amd64,
> ia32e and Intel 64), as "Windows for x86_64" doesn't sound that sexy,
> and was later adopted by Sun and others. 
> ia64/Itanium doesn't have any other alias names AFAIK.

We simply found that:
- amd64 is misleading
- em64t would be more to the point for some?
- x64 is what the vendors (Apple, Sun) advertise themselves
- amd64 doesn't make any sense for a Mac
- x64 is more like x86, whereas the complement of amd64 would more be
  i386 or ia32, but we wanted to avoid x86_64, x8664, so x64
- we were changing keywords anyway


-- 
Fabian Groffen
Gentoo on a different level