Re: running legacy apps compiled for 7.2 & 7.3 in x86-64

["Mike A. Harris" <mharris@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 5 May 2003, Thomas Dodd wrote:

>Mike A. Harris wrote:
>> GinGin64 is not an alpha nor a beta product, but rather it is a
>> technology preview which essentially is an unsupported port of
>> Red Hat Linux 9 to AMD64 along with a number of specific updates
>> and fixes for AMD64.
>
>Any chances of a supported port of RHL-9 to the Opteron?

GinGin64 *is* our port of RHL 9 to AMD64, and it is an 
unsupported technology preview.  Our first supported release for 
the AMD64 platform, and thus Opteron, will be Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux (version 3) in the fall.

Users are encouraged to try our technology preview, and provide 
us with feedback, bug reports, etc. as that will help to shape 
future products on the AMD64 platform as well.


>> This technology preview is not an official Red Hat supported
>> release, but allows customers to be able to evaluate the AMD64
>> architecture using a technology preview of many of the various
>> technologies which will be officially released for AMD64 in Red
>> Hat Enterprise Linux later this fall.
>
>Any plans for a non RHEL version at all?

The current plan is to ship RHEL in the fall as a fully supported
product for the AMD64 platform.  Further than that, as has been
the case in the past, Red Hat does not preannounce product plans,
release dates, version numbers of future or possible future
products.

At this point, it would be speculation of a hypothetical to 
attempt to answer your question with any more detail.  
Speculation isn't really something we provide to people about 
future products.


>Can anyone answer the original question? Given that GinGin64 is
>unsupported, how likely, and what are the steps, to run EDA
>tools developed for RHL7.x on it?

"How likely" deals with probabilities, and there is really no way
to mathematically calculate the probability of something like
that working or not working because we haven't done any testing
of such an installation environment, so we'd only be making
random guesses.  The only real solid way to know for sure, is to
install GinGin64 on an Opteron box and try to get it to work.

It is highly likely that GinGin64 may not be for you as being an
unsupported product, it is not intended for use in real
production environments, other than for technology evaluation.  
Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be the first product for AMD64
which is intended for fullscale production use in the enterprise.
The 32bit compatibility environment that will be available 
should be compatible with the x86 product version IIRC.

I have no idea what official level of backward compatibility to
RHL 8.0, or RHL 7.x will be provided with the product, or will
work with the product once it is available.  Someone else here
might be able to comment better on that however.  If I had to 
guess, I would presume that backward compat libs should work 
fine, however without actually testing that out, it is anyone's 
guess.

Hope this helps.



-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat