A Microsoft executive sent out a snotty email chastising anyone who has been encouraging people to purchase the Vista upgrade and install it without owning a valid Windows license. People discovered long ago that the Vista upgrade, which costs half of what full license costs, will install on new hardware without verification of a previous install. Microsoft's Eric Ligman points out, to those people who weren't aware, that this is just as much a violation of the license as "borrowing" an install disk from a friend.
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Member since:2007-08-29
On Linux, basically you download and install a 64-bit version and not everything works. ;p
After installing the 32-bit libs it's transparent for just running binaries, but you have to --force-architecture to install 32-bit packages, and some closed-source stuff won't work if the makers can't be arsed to make a 64-bit version (e.g., flash).
Member since:2005-07-13
Member since:2005-08-11
"For that matter Microsoft <em>must</em> merge the 32/64-bit distributions or face being left lagging come the next generation. 64-bit chips are common, but currently the entry bar to using 64-bit software is obscene - aided by Microsoft's Vista versions malarky."
No. The cost of changing to the 64Bit version of Vista when you own a copy of 32 Bit Vista is almost nothing. For me, it is 7 bucks cdn, They just send you a new disk that allows you to install the 64 bit version, which invalidates your 32 bit version. It also comes already ont he disk if you own Ultimate. Annoying, sure, but surely it is not obscene
Member since:2005-11-10
Member since:2005-09-15
64 bit is fairly transparent on Linux as well. (Keep in mind OS-x is based on bsd unix so there's some similarities). Software in Linux is mostly downloaded from repositories which detect whether you need 32 or 64bit software. It used to be necessary to install 32 bit libraries in your 64 bit Linux but now even multimedia software is 64 bit so that is no longer necessary.
Member since:
2005-11-10
For that matter Microsoft <em>must</em> merge the 32/64-bit distributions or face being left lagging come the next generation. 64-bit chips are common, but currently the entry bar to using 64-bit software is obscene - aided by Microsoft's Vista versions malarky.
Binary fatness/bit-depth should be absolutely transparent to the user. If it's not transparent it won't be adopted, and installing a whole new OS with strict driver requirements, and then downloading 64-bit specific files from a download page is just too much right now.
Can anyone enlighten me to how it's done on Linux? The Mac model is really delightful for the end user, they download the same app as everybody else, and the whole process is transparent to the hardware.