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Date:      Sat, 7 Jun 2003 11:43:09 +0930
From:      Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr>
Cc:        chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Peeve: why "i386"?
Message-ID:  <20030607021309.GC86974@wantadilla.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <20030605165217.A388@online.fr>
References:  <20030605165217.A388@online.fr>

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On Thursday,  5 June 2003 at 16:52:17 -0400, 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?

There's a difference between the i386 architecture, which is still
going strong, and the Intel 80386 processor, which is obsolete for
normal applications.

> Why not call it x86, or ia32, if not in the kernel config then at
> least in the release notes and documentation,=20

There are so many places in the sources which use the name that it
would be very difficult.  And the name is still correct, more correct
than x86.

> as everyone else has been doing for years?

They have?  I hadn't noticed.

Greg
--
See complete headers for address and phone numbers

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