[64studio-devel] 64studio project naming

[Daniel James]

Hi Quentin,

 >> Why are developers calling their
>> product 'AMD64'?

> Just because they were first.  Because some people still call any vacuum 
> cleaner a "hoover".

That's right, and it's also the position of the Debian project that AMD 
should get the credit for the work they did. AMD helped Linux kernel 
developers to release the first native support for the architecture.

Cast your mind back a few years, and you'll recall that Intel were 
attempting to steer us towards the Itanium architecture for the creative 
Linux desktop, in partnership with companies like SGI. I'm really glad 
that didn't happen, because only the best-funded studios can afford that 
hardware, and I think everyone deserves the chance to use free software.

>> EM64T seems to be supported, and yet nobody calls their distro:
>> "Boogityboo-.099_EM64T".

That's also because Intel have changed their name for AMD64 several 
times. They've now dropped 'EM64T' to call it Intel64, which I 
personally think is pretty lame, because their implementation is pretty 
much identical. If you want a vendor-neutral term, you could say 'x86-64'.

> As long as you don't start with "MS compatible 64 Studio" you should be OK!

Microsoft and Sun both call it x64 now, just to be different.

Cheers!

Daniel