Running Debian without Unity on a machine that is 64 bit capable!

Sorry Bryan, I can show you plenty of hardware that is perfectly 64 bit capable but probably never will run Ubuntu and/or Unity. First, what is 64 bit for you? Looking at ubuntu.com/download and getting images from there, one gets the impression, that 64 bit is amd64 (also called x86_64). If one digs deeper to cdimage.ubuntu.com, one will find non-Intel images too: PowerPC and amrhf. As the PowerPC images are said to boot on G3 and G4 PowerPCs, these are 32 bit. Armhf is 32 bit too (arm64/aarch64 support in Linux is just evolving). So yes, if 64 bit means amd64, I do have hardware that can run Unity. But you asked if I have hardware that is 64 bit capable and can run Ubuntu/Unity, so may I apply my definiton of 64 bit here? I have an old Sun Netra T1-200 (500MHz UltraSPARC IIe) running Debian's sparc port, which has a 64 bit kernel and 32 bit userland. Unity? No wai. I do not own any ia64 or s390/s390x machines, but I am sure people do. And guess what, no Unity there either :) Sorry for ranting like this, but 64 bit really just means that the CPU can handle 64 bit big addresses etc. End even then, it not always will do so ;)

Comments

Bryan Quigley wrote on 2013-06-19 18:26:

Yes for the purposes of my little study 64 bit means AMD64/X86_64.

I didn’t even think about other archs for this study, because as you mentioned they aren’t likely to run Ubuntu/Unity anyway. (Aside from Arm64, but AFAIK there isn’t any real hardware for that yet).

The point of the survey was to get some data to see about Ubuntu changing the default image on the website from 32 bit (x86) to 64 bit (x86_64). The main Ubuntu website does’t easily offer anything except for those two.

Anyway.. I think you know what I was getting at.. but I totally understand your rant on it. x86 isn’t the only arch in existance.

Other note: I tried posting here first, but comments are broken: http://ubunteroz.freeserver.me/

evgeni wrote on 2013-06-19 20:00:

Who/whatever that freeserver stuff is, it’s not me. They seem to copy lots of planets there.

For the survey: as Ubuntu x86 does not boot on non-PAE hardware anyways, there is no gain in having x86 at all, that is correct.

Send your comments to evgeni+blogcomments@golov.de and I will publish them here (if you want).