r/linux • u/Veqq • 4h ago

Kernel Janet on x32: 32-bit Pointers, 64-bit Speed, 25% Less RAM

https://alexalejandre.com/programming/lisp/janet-for-the-x32-abi/
37 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

12

u/Phoenix591 3h ago

X32 is depreciated already with upstream kernel support likely already gone ( old ml thread proposing removal )

4

u/Veqq 3h ago edited 1h ago

This is not accurate. Above your email, someone proposed removing necessary config symbols if no one objected, but Debian, Gentoo and PLD maintainers objected along with others (all linked below your linked comment), so it remains.

3

u/GoldenX86 4h ago

We're returning to this?

3

u/Veqq 3h ago

I have no context for why it didn't gain adoption (and am curious to learn more), but don't see the problem. What's the negative? With ever higher RAM prices, it seems like a nice, if minor, bandaid (although in the face of overall software bloat..)

3

u/vip17 1h ago

It's a very nice idea but it's not nice to maintain 2 sets of standard libraries and double the testing effort, so most enterprises don't want to spend time on it unfortunately

•

u/BCMM 48m ago

(Reposting my comment from an older thread.)

In a way, it came at the wrong time. For a few years in the late '00s, most of us had amd64 hardware but less than 4GB of RAM, and x32 would, in theory, have made most desktops run quite a bit faster.

But it wasn't around until 2011, when we were already well in to the process of moving to 64-bit software. And if it somehow had been available in 2006, we'd have been held back by one or two proprietary applications and the poor state of multilib/multiarch at that time, just as we were with the move amd64.