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Author Topic: [EN] x32 conclusions from a Gentoo developer  (Read 3841 times)

Offline ralul

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[EN] x32 conclusions from a Gentoo developer
« on: 2012/06/20, 13:38:01 »
http://blog.flameeyes.eu/2012/06/is-x32-for-me-short-answer-no
Quote
...
and all for what? To have a smaller address range and thus smaller pointers, to save on memory usage and memory bandwidth … by the time x32 will be ready, I’d be ready to bet that neither concerns will be that important — heck I don’t have a single computer with less than 8GB of RAM, right now!
It might be more interesting to know why is x32 so important for enough people to work on it; to me, it seems like the main reason is that it saves a lot of memory on C++ programs, simply because every class and every object has so many pointers (functions, virtual functions and so on so forth), that the change from 32 to 64 bit has been a hit big enough. Given that there is so much software still written in C++ (I’m unconvinced as to why to be honest), it’s likely that there is enough interest in working on this to improve the performance.
But at the end of the day, I’m really concerned that this might not be worth the effort: we’re calling unto us another big problem with this kind of multilib (considering we never really solved multilib for the “classic” amd64, and that Debian is still working hard to get their multiarch method out of the door), plus a number of software porting problems that will keep a lot of people busy for the next years. The efforts would probably be better directed at improving the current software and moving everything to pure 64-bit.
...
Croes answered:
Quote
Imagine Facebook, why would they need PHP to run as a 64bit program? What would they lose if they’d run it under x32 ABI? What would they gain? Performance per server.
So it might not matter for desktop users, it does matter if you’re actually running a server
experiencing siduction runs better than my gentoo makes me know I know nothing

Offline ralul

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x32 conclusions from a Gentoo developer
« Reply #1 on: 2012/06/20, 14:02:15 »
What Diego Pettenò says about C++ comes into play when Kde developers discussed to give up their special kdelibs:
widget -> kdelib -> qtlib
if favor of
widget -> qtlib
directly. I dont know what the Kde project decided yet.

But most important performance issue is about Kde badly maintained their nepomuk framework. It is that complicated and interdependant that I was not able to disable "sementic-desktop" at my Gentoo installation. I think the Kde projekt would gain huge success if they just would publish a slimed down Kde-SC without nepomuk. Sure it is possible to configure Kde that way, but nobody knows how ...

Which is why razorqt ...
experiencing siduction runs better than my gentoo makes me know I know nothing

Offline devil

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x32 conclusions from a Gentoo developer
« Reply #2 on: 2012/06/20, 14:24:24 »
Nepomuk is easy to disable, even in systemsettings. what xou cannot disable is akonadi. and there will never be a KDE SC version, released by the KDE Team, without akonadi.

greetz
devil

Offline ralul

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x32 conclusions from a Gentoo developer
« Reply #3 on: 2012/06/20, 15:25:40 »
As akonadi feeds Pim-Apps like kmail, adressbook etc ?

But why shouldn't it be possible to publish a minimal kde without any PimApp? My reasoning might be obsoleted by razorqt ...
experiencing siduction runs better than my gentoo makes me know I know nothing

Offline devil

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x32 conclusions from a Gentoo developer
« Reply #4 on: 2012/06/20, 16:05:02 »
I did not say it was impossible, it just won't happen.

greetz
devil