Linked by Jeremy T. Fox on Fri 11th Jul 2003 16:55 UTC
A recent article by Tony Smith from The Register titled "Mac OS X 10.3 Panther will not be a 64-bit OS" caused a good deal of confusion with many people, including me. It is also caused a heated argument here on OSNews. The basic point of the article is that Mac OS 10.2.7 and 10.3 are not "true" 64-bit OSes, but the article does not clearly explain what a "true" 64-bit OS is. This had led to a lot of claims that the article is false or misinformed, rather than just unclear, which is certainly is.
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>> If you want a 64-bit OS on the desktop, use the
>> appropriate versions of Windows or Linux on an
>> Itanium or AMD64 (Opteron, Athlon64) machine.
> ...in which case, you will still be running 32-bit
> applications under unless they've been recompiled,
> or you're compiling it yourself.
This is particularly true on WINDOWS. However, on O.S.S operating systems available for the powerpc such as Linux, OpenBSD and NetBSD have most if not all of the applications compiled from scratch *FOR* their appropriate archicture. This goes without saying for OpenBSD and NetBSD, particularly because of their ports system. Linux will be available on PowerPC 970 with Yellowdog (I know) and Debian (I believe). Both of these distros are more than likely to compile everything with 64bit instructions.
Admittedly, closed source applications such as Opera and Oracle will have to have their respective companies recompile them for us. Oracle will most likely be one of the first vendors to make such a move.
Most typical Mac users won't even notice this. But, I acknoledge that some -such as you and I - will. Those that do are free to use one of the *BSDs, Linux or Fink to bring full 64bit applications to our desktops.