From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 5 14:18:54 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 15B1F37B404 for ; Thu, 5 Jun 2003 14:18:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pa-plum1b-166.pit.adelphia.net (pa-plum1b-138.pit.adelphia.net [24.53.161.138]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4796943FD7 for ; Thu, 5 Jun 2003 14:18:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from potentialtech.com (working [172.16.0.95]) h55LIpp7005993; Thu, 5 Jun 2003 17:18:52 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Message-ID: <3EDFB3BB.7090300@potentialtech.com> Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 17:18:51 -0400 From: Bill Moran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030429 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Rahul Siddharthan References: <20030605165217.A388@online.fr> In-Reply-To: <20030605165217.A388@online.fr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Peeve: why "i386"? X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 21:18:54 -0000 Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > Why do all the BSDs continue to refer to the 32 bit Intel architecture > as i386 even when they typically won't even install on an i386 any > more? Why not call it x86, or ia32, if not in the kernel config then > at least in the release notes and documentation, as everyone else has > been doing for years? > > I personally find "i386" ugly and antiquated-sounding; many people > find it confusing and misleading. (Yes I know it's come up on the > lists before. I haven't seen any good answers though, "for historical > reasons" isn't a good answer.) If it's that important to you, you're welcome to find all the places in the source and doc that it's used, correct them and submit patches. I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing it changed. If you don't have the time to do such work, or you've got other features you'd rather see added first, then I'm guessing you just answered your own question. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com