Why 32 bit?

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@lelldorin Reading the “new in HaikuDepot” thread I see you are doing a lot of development on the 32 bit side. I’m curious; what is your initiative for doing so much development in there? Are there a lot of people still running the Be programs that won’t run under 64 bits? And thanks for doing so much for this community! Best, …Monty.

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Thanks for nice words, i do my own programs for booth, 32 and 64 bit now. But i package available programs if they are open to do it too. The most of them are 32bit.

I know that i need to rebuild done of my programs for 64bit, but i does not now who really need or use it, because of low Feedback.

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Understood. Maybe there are more 32 bit users than 64 bit users. I’m using in a VM, maybe I should make a 32 bit one also, in order to compare the available software between the two environments.

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Our 64bit repo is here: http://software.besly.de/index.php?system=haiku64

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For 32Bit you will find the Graphic Program “Wonderbrush” not available for 64Bit by now…
Great Software for Vector and! Bitmap Graphics…
…and LibreOffice is available for 64Bit only by now…

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LibreOffice is available in both architectures: 32 and 64 bits.

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There were a few closed source apps from BeOS that were considered must-haves that are 32bit only. SoundPlay and GoBe Productive come to mind. Also, the fact remains that older 32bit computers are still plentiful in non-first-world locations. 64 bit is still a rarity in many parts of the globe. We like to keep a broad spectrum of potential users.

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Not as many apps for the 64bit version of Haiku as there are for the 32bit version. BeOS app support is limited to the 32bit version of Haiku.

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Thanks everyone! I had read the bit about old BeOS applications but didn’t realize they still had so many fans in the community. I’ve downloaded the install ISO for the 32 bit version and will create a VM.

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That’s what I’ve done. I wasn’t sure if 32 bit Haiku would work bare metal in my notebook, so I installed 64 bit Haiku in hardware and 32 bit Haiku in a VM.

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64 bit hardware fully supports the 32bit instruction set. You shouldn’t have any issues specific to running 32 bit operating systems on 64bit hardware. This is of course aside from any bugs in the software that would pose a problem on any hardware. Also, 64 bit software will only run on 64 bit hardware.