On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler@chello.at> wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> I noticed that http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora appears to be
> strongly promoting i386 Fedora over x86_64. Is this intentional or an
> oversight?

This is, sadly, intentional. I and others have been complaining about this
for months, we got ignored, all in the names of making things work for
people who are not smart enough to figure out whether their computer is 64-
bit or not. The argument that almost all new non-netbook machines are 64-bit
anyway also got ignored.

IMHO, the right solution is to make the 64-bit edition the default download
and to work on making the error message people get when trying to install it
on a 32-bit machine nicer: "We're sorry, but your computer is too old to
install this 64-bit version of Fedora. Please download the legacy 32-bit
edition instead."

       Kevin Kofler


Is it right to call 32-bit legacy though? As it is, the Intel architecture doesn't seem like a true 64-bit architecture. It seems more like it extends the 32-bit arch and wraps 64-bitness around it.

In any case, 32-bit shouldn't be considered legacy until every type of computer sold is 64-bit. And the fact is, that isn't true. Netbooks are entirely 32-bit currently, and a majority of low end desktops are still 32-bit only.