On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Jeff Spaletajspaleta@gmail.com wrote:
Just as an aside, can we do anything to help people identify whether their hardware is 64bit capable?
grep lm /proc/cpuinfo
Fedora doesn't even indicate what video card that they're using why should it provide a way to discover the 64bit capability.
I'm thinking specifically with people with "Centrino" stickered laptops of unclear vintage who may not realize that they have a 64bit capable machine even when they do. The Centrino branding doesn't exactly make it obvious as Intel pushed 64bit capability into the brand at some point (2006 ?).
How many people are running 32bit Fedora on 64bit capable hardware without realizing its 64bit capable laptop hardware?
I think that those that care probably know and are running x86_64. If they're like me, they stick the x86_64 cd into their wife's computer and discover that it's got one of older processors when it gives the error message.
Trying to berate people into using x86_64 as I've seen in this and other threads has gotten annoying. People that run i386 on x86_64 capable hardware usually have a reason. On my work laptop, I run i386 simply because it makes my life easier. I have to work with proprietary software that is mostly 32bit. I don't want to deal with having to make sure that I've got the various 32bit libraries installed.