What is the future direction on this? When I look at OSF/1 or the IA64 bit
versions of most Linux distributions I get jealous on how clean their
environment is... For most server environments, 32bit versions of libraries
you don't need are just clutter...
Funny enough, many operating system for Ultrasparc (both Solaris and Debian Linux) decide to run a 32-bit userspace under a 64-bit kernel.
I think things are different with SPARC than with AMD64; AMD64 not only widens registers, but it adds more registers. Some things run faster in 64-bit mode in AMD64. On the other hand, applications that handle a lot of pointers will bulk up substantially in 64-bit mode: 32-bit binaries will lose less RAM.
If you're running, say, mod_perl, under Apache prefork, or even a Java system that burns a lot of RAM, you might be better off running in 32-bit mode than 64-bit mode.
