Release: Multiple 64Bit OS 3bplus desktop&lite

[spl23]

I still say that using "Raspberry Pi" in a brand name strongly implies something about the hardware rather than the software. If you want to brand the core software or just the GUI layer(s), a brand new name would be needed to add clarity.

As Eben has made clear on numerous occasions, Raspberry Pi is not just a hardware company. We employ many software engineers - probably more than we do hardware engineers - and we are as proud of the software we have developed as the hardware. Having a separate brand for the software achieves nothing positive - any more than having a separate name for our educational foundation would achieve.

[droleary]

As Eben has made clear on numerous occasions, Raspberry Pi is not just a hardware company.

While that may be "clear" to people who know everything that everybody there does, the brand of Raspberry Pi is most closely tied to your hardware offerings. Whether it's the Wikipedia entry, the raspberrypi.org web site, or the general consciousness of the public, your current brand mainly revolves around offering a small computer. If you want to change that perception, you have some rebranding work to do.

Having a separate brand for the software achieves nothing positive - any more than having a separate name for our educational foundation would achieve.

I would strongly disagree. And keep in mind that a distinct brand does not necessarily imply a "separate" brand. It all comes down to how the larger organization subsumes the component groups. I don't know the specific origins of the Raspberry Pi name/brand itself, but I would have to imagine there are offshoot brands that would be easy to establish. Or just pick some other theme or random names like a lot of other companies do. Here are some to get you started:

• raw
• music
• scale
• dictionary
• delicate
• hunt
• brave
• dare

I honestly really like the potential of that last one. It has some built-in catch phrases ("Do it on a Dare", "Dare to Dream", etc.) and a ton of motivational synonyms. But if I can't convince you there's anything positive in that sort of thing, so be it.

[bensimmo]

That was never a problem for me, I could see Raspberry Pi as the small computer and Raspberry Pi as the company. Like Apple, Apple computers and Apple phones, while these last ones do have long established Apple iPhone and, Apple iPad branding.
Although the Raspberry Pi's are now becoming similar. Just the shortened Pi is becoming to mean the small computer, especially with the model after it. Most say Pi£, Pis Zero and not the full no. 'Pi' is their 'i'.

The education part is the one that has the brandings. CodeClub, CoderDojo, PiJam, AstroPi although if you could tell the difference between the first three since they all overlap with each other now, but with PiJam being less targeted. Personally, I think CodeClub needs to drop back to Primary only age and CoderDojo take on the Senior school age.

Although just looking at the thread title I have no idea what this has to do with it, I've even forgotten the topics original post.

[spl23]

Having a separate brand for the software achieves nothing positive - any more than having a separate name for our educational foundation would achieve.

I would strongly disagree.

I think those of us who work on software development for Raspberry Pi might reasonably feel somewhat offended at your implication that our work somehow devalues or is otherwise unworthy of the Raspberry Pi brand name.

For us to brand the x86 environment as something other than a Raspberry Pi product would be ludicrous - the entire point of it is that it allows people to run the Raspberry Pi environment on other hardware; we actively want the x86 product to offer a "Raspberry Pi" experience.

The history of computing is filled with hugely successful companies who offered both hardware and OS software under the same brand - Apple, Sinclair, Commodore etc. - why did these companies not also require separate software branding? You have given no justification whatsoever for your claim that our software somehow requires a separate brand identity from the company, other than you personally feeling it should - and you are, to my knowledge, the only one of our customers to make such a claim...

[echmain]

How about Rasp6i4n

[epoch1970]

If I had my way, we'd call it a certain 5-letter word which was introduced to deal with this very issue, but a certain large technology company have decided that that word, in spite of being a standard computing term for 40 years or so, now belongs to them...

Shame, shame. "Sprite" would have been sooo much better

I would use common, last or first names. Easy to remember and harder to claim. Debian, Ubuntu, Apple (for OSX), Docker... they all do that.

[spl23]

Shame, shame. "Sprite" would have been sooo much better

If only I'd thought of that...

I would use common, last or first names.

"Kevin" it is then!

[davidcoton]

"Kevin" it is then!

Surely not Kevin. Colin.

[maximelebled]

Are there benchmarks of software, like ffmpeg, to show if there is a performance increase that's worth it?

[droleary]

I think those of us who work on software development for Raspberry Pi might reasonably feel somewhat offended at your implication that our work somehow devalues or is otherwise unworthy of the Raspberry Pi brand name.

That makes very little sense. Is everyone who worked on the Raspberry Pi Zero crying about being associated with that name? A brand is not about you or your feelings, it's about communicating the message(s) of the organization. If clarity is more easily attained by using multiple brands for important sub-projects (software or otherwise), your goal should be trying to prove yourself worthy of that brand name, whatever it might be.

For us to brand the x86 environment as something other than a Raspberry Pi product would be ludicrous - the entire point of it is that it allows people to run the Raspberry Pi environment on other hardware; we actively want the x86 product to offer a "Raspberry Pi" experience.

Then, again, you have a rebranding effort to undertake that better shifts the Raspberry Pi brand from mainly hardware to a systems and/or software company. This has been done before by companies like NeXT. But you actually have to do it. You could start by changing raspberrypi.org to de-emphasize your hardware offering and I'm sure Wikipedia and everyone else would follow suit.

The history of computing is filled with hugely successful companies who offered both hardware and OS software under the same brand - Apple, Sinclair, Commodore etc. - why did these companies not also require separate software branding?

Now you're clearly grasping at straws. All of those did have multiple different brands for their various offerings that were subsumed under their corporate brand, and I even directly mentioned some of Apple's. Look, if you don't like the idea, there's no reason to unscientifically ignore the obvious evidence that resoundingly refutes your point. Just say you don't like it. Case closed.

[ejolson]

Are there benchmarks of software, like ffmpeg, to show if there is a performance increase that's worth it?

Thanks for bringing this thread back on topic. The original post was actually about running the standard 32-bit Raspbian user land on top of a custom 64-bit kernel. Thus, for a built-in application such as ffmpeg you would be running the exact same 32-bit binary as before with likely almost identical performance.

From what I understand, moving to 64-bit in this half-hearted way maintains compatibility with all standard Raspberry Pi software while at the same time opening the door to create custom 64-bit applications. Such custom applications might include 64-bit only versions of current Firefox and some databases. Any program that makes extensive use of 64-bit integer arithmetic should see a performance increase. The most notable is the sysbench CPU test, which runs from 5 to 10 times faster on 64-bit ARM compared to 32-bit.

[spl23]

I think those of us who work on software development for Raspberry Pi might reasonably feel somewhat offended at your implication that our work somehow devalues or is otherwise unworthy of the Raspberry Pi brand name.

That makes very little sense. Is everyone who worked on the Raspberry Pi Zero crying about being associated with that name? A brand is not about you or your feelings, it's about communicating the message(s) of the organization. If clarity is more easily attained by using multiple brands for important sub-projects (software or otherwise), your goal should be trying to prove yourself worthy of that brand name, whatever it might be.

For someone who is arguing about "communicating the message", I must say you seem to me to be doing a poor job of it yourself.

I completely fail to see your point about Raspberry Pi Zero - you were claiming that it was damaging our brand by not having a separate brand for our software; what another hardware product has to do with this is beyond me. The implication from what you have previously said is that using the Raspberry PI brand for our software devalues the brand. If that is not what you are saying, perhaps you could try to actually explain what the negative impact on our business is from our use of a single brand for hardware and software at present, and what the potential positive impact might be from having more brands? (Other than potentially income for a brand consultant - and I can tell you now that that isn't happening...)

For us to brand the x86 environment as something other than a Raspberry Pi product would be ludicrous - the entire point of it is that it allows people to run the Raspberry Pi environment on other hardware; we actively want the x86 product to offer a "Raspberry Pi" experience.

Then, again, you have a rebranding effort to undertake that better shifts the Raspberry Pi brand from mainly hardware to a systems and/or software company. This has been done before by companies like NeXT. But you actually have to do it. You could start by changing raspberrypi.org to de-emphasize your hardware offering and I'm sure Wikipedia and everyone else would follow suit.

Again - why? You are the only person I have seen who seems to think that we shouldn't offer multiple products, both hardware and software, under the Raspberry Pi brand - which we also use for publishing magazines (have a look inside a copy of the Magpi) and our educational foundation. I can't see any reason at all why it is a problem for our company to produce both hardware and software, any more than it was for the likes of Sinclair.

Consider Richard Branson's Virgin brand - this has been associated with, among others, a music company, an airline, a rail franchise, a cable television company, a soft drink and even a spaceship. It doesn't seem to have done his income that much harm, does it? If you have a strong brand - and that is precisely what Raspberry Pi is - it makes far more sense to apply that brand to multiple products under the same umbrella than it does to spawn dozens of sub-brands.

The only reason for sub-branding is to avoid confusion between products. As far as I am aware, no-one has yet tried to order a Pi board and been delivered a copy of the magazine, or some free-to-download software. Branding software as being from Raspberry Pi establishes a clear link to our hardware - and that's a good thing; it implies that either the software is designed to work on our hardware, or that it is designed to give the same experience as using our hardware on other platforms. If, as you claim, that is damaging our brand, I really can't see how.

The history of computing is filled with hugely successful companies who offered both hardware and OS software under the same brand - Apple, Sinclair, Commodore etc. - why did these companies not also require separate software branding?

Now you're clearly grasping at straws. All of those did have multiple different brands for their various offerings that were subsumed under their corporate brand, and I even directly mentioned some of Apple's.

Remind me again, what was Sinclair's software brand? What was Commodore's? In the case of Sinclair, all their additional software was sold with very clear Sinclair branding, and their operating system was so closely associated with the hardware that it wasn't even distinguished from it. Admittedly Commodore did give a name to the Amiga's operating system, but the name AmigaOS isn't really a different brand from that used for the hardware, is it? And as for Apple, while MacOS and OSX may now be brands, for the first 15 years or so of the Macintosh, the OS was simply called "System" - hardly a strong brand name, and not one of which the vast majority of their customers were even aware.

Look, if you don't like the idea, there's no reason to unscientifically ignore the obvious evidence that resoundingly refutes your point. Just say you don't like it. Case closed.

It's not a question of not liking the idea - it is that you have simply expressed the idea that it is somehow damaging to our business to not sub-brand our different activities, but not actually supported that with a single piece of evidence as to what said damage is, how it is affecting us in the wider world, or what positive effect doing what you suggest might have.

[droleary]

For someone who is arguing about "communicating the message", I must say you seem to me to be doing a poor job of it yourself.

Sometimes a message simply can't be communicated because one party refuses to hear it. This seems to be just such a case.

I completely fail to see your point about Raspberry Pi Zero - you were claiming that it was damaging our brand by not having a separate brand for our software; what another hardware product has to do with this is beyond me.

I was directly addressing your statement that your feelings would be hurt if you couldn't be working for the main brand. I was contrasting how silly that was with an existing Raspberry Pi brand name; the "nothing" hardware that is a Zero. But I'd wager that everyone involved with the Zero (and many of us out here) don't see themselves as "unworthy" for working on such a brand. I don't think it's asking too much to expect that level of maturity from the software teams, too.

The implication from what you have previously said is that using the Raspberry PI brand for our software devalues the brand.

Not devalues, but dilutes. And causes confusion (which is why this thread took a tangent into branding). There's a reason Apple doesn't, at any level of the organization, just call their system software "Apple". I don't know what levels of motivated reasoning you're resorting to in order to blind yourself to this kind of obvious fact.

If that is not what you are saying, perhaps you could try to actually explain what the negative impact on our business is from our use of a single brand for hardware and software at present, and what the potential positive impact might be from having more brands?

It's not just about the present, but about future projects both internal and external. People like, and often need, things to be named well to understand how the complex pieces of computer systems fit together. That's why the Zero works well as a name. It's also why the current naming conventions of the "Desktop" software are so awkward to use. It's something that should be fixed sooner rather than later, because the problem will only get worse as the Raspberry Pi brand expands.

You are the only person I have seen who seems to think that we shouldn't offer multiple products, both hardware and software, under the Raspberry Pi brand

No, I seem to recall someone inside the organization mentioning they wanted to use some 5 letter word. Now what was their name . . .

But, seriously, just because you don't see a lot of talk doesn't mean there isn't a problem. And a thread tangent is not the best place to be looking for the larger community's feedback. But, as I've said, the real issue should fundamentally be how the Raspberry Pi organization wants to grow and/or be seen in a context larger than producing small computer hardware.

which we also use for publishing magazines (have a look inside a copy of the Magpi)

Your statement is self-contradictory. You need only look at the cover of the magazine to see it has a different brand: Magpi. And if you do look inside, how many of the articles are about the software that doesn't run on Raspberry Pi hardware? Again, as the Raspberry Pi brand exists today, it is not a software brand. Either you change it more to become one, or you re-brand/sub-brand in a way that makes clear how important the different software components are (a la Raspbian).

Consider Richard Branson's Virgin brand

Let's not keep multiplying entities. Suffice it to say that, like Apple and most other companies, Virgin operates as an umbrella brand over a ton of other sub-brands that are easy to distinguish and place in their respective markets.

Remind me again, what was Sinclair's software brand?

According to Wikipedia, Sinclair BASIC. It simply isn't a parity comparison because they didn't seem to actually have software that was portable to other machines. That's a big part of where the water gets muddy when it comes to what people are supposed to understand the Raspberry Pi brand to be.

What was Commodore's?

They had multiple brands of hardware, which had multiple brands (and sub-brands) of software. This includes many sub-brands for their AmigaOS offering, like Exec, Kickstart, Intuition, Workbench, etc. Still, like Sinclair, I'm not sure how much of it was cross platform. Your cherry picking of these companies isn't very productive. Perhaps we can focus more on what makes sense for Raspberry Pi in 2018 and beyond?
[/quote]

And as for Apple, while MacOS and OSX may now be brands, for the first 15 years or so of the Macintosh, the OS was simply called "System" - hardly a strong brand name, and not one of which the vast majority of their customers were even aware.

You realize you're supporting my point, don't you? Yes, a system company like Apple had no need for a special public brand for their Macintosh OS when it was an isolated product. Once that stopped being the case, it made sense for them to start to manage the complexity by starting to label things better. Where do you think they'd be today if that hadn't done that?

My argument is that Raspberry Pi has dipped their toes in that same water by putting out software that doesn't run on Raspberry Pi hardware. That's an important milestone. It should be handled with more intention that is currently the case.

It's not a question of not liking the idea - it is that you have simply expressed the idea that it is somehow damaging to our business to not sub-brand our different activities, but not actually supported that with a single piece of evidence as to what said damage is, how it is affecting us in the wider world, or what positive effect doing what you suggest might have.

I'm in no position to make the business case for you to make any changes. I can only point to the historical evidence that is right in front of you regarding other organizations that have faced similar issues. I highly recommending standing on the shoulders of giants if you want to see further.

[epoch1970]

Raspi McPalmface.
For your consideration.

[Heater]

epoch1970,

Raspi McPalmface.

Ha. Yes indeed.

Can we please skip this pointless naming/branding waffle and discuss getting these nice 64 bit operating systems for the Raspberry Pi. Whatever they are called.

All I want is 64 bit version of Debian for the Pi with whatever additions it needs to support Pi hardware goodies.

[spl23]

I completely fail to see your point about Raspberry Pi Zero - you were claiming that it was damaging our brand by not having a separate brand for our software; what another hardware product has to do with this is beyond me.

I was directly addressing your statement that your feelings would be hurt if you couldn't be working for the main brand. I was contrasting how silly that was with an existing Raspberry Pi brand name; the "nothing" hardware that is a Zero. But I'd wager that everyone involved with the Zero (and many of us out here) don't see themselves as "unworthy" for working on such a brand. I don't think it's asking too much to expect that level of maturity from the software teams, too.

In that case, you have completely misunderstood my point. I did not make any claim that anyone's feelings would be hurt by working on a sub-brand (but the fact that the product is called the "Raspberry Pi Zero" and not the "Zero" is a rather clear sign that you have chosen a poor example).

You have averred that lumping our software and hardware work under the same brand somehow devalues the brand, and claimed that "Raspberry Pi" is a hardware brand and our software should not be associated with it. I reject this completely.

Leaving aside any other considerations, without the software we develop, the Pi wouldn't even boot - the low-level system software we develop is intrinsic to the operation of the Pi. Our desktop software is an integral part of the Raspberry Pi user experience, it supports our educational goals, and is a significant component of our effort to make computing more accessible.

The implication from what you have previously said is that using the Raspberry PI brand for our software devalues the brand.

Not devalues, but dilutes. And causes confusion (which is why this thread took a tangent into branding). There's a reason Apple doesn't, at any level of the organization, just call their system software "Apple". I don't know what levels of motivated reasoning you're resorting to in order to blind yourself to this kind of obvious fact.

We don't call our software "Raspberry Pi". We call it "the Raspberry Pi Desktop". You claim above that "Raspberry Pi Zero" is a sub-brand; well, so is "Raspberry Pi Desktop". Can you please point out one case of confusion caused by a person who thought they were buying a hardware board and downloaded a desktop OS by mistake? Or vice-versa?

If that is not what you are saying, perhaps you could try to actually explain what the negative impact on our business is from our use of a single brand for hardware and software at present, and what the potential positive impact might be from having more brands?

It's not just about the present, but about future projects both internal and external. People like, and often need, things to be named well to understand how the complex pieces of computer systems fit together. That's why the Zero works well as a name. It's also why the current naming conventions of the "Desktop" software are so awkward to use. It's something that should be fixed sooner rather than later, because the problem will only get worse as the Raspberry Pi brand expands.

There is one "naming convention". We ship a desktop OS, and we call it "the Raspberry Pi Desktop". I am struggling to see how calling it anything else could be *less* confusing than that, and, to take a couple of your previous suggestions as examples, I can't take seriously the claim that calling it "Raspberry Pi Dictionary" or "Raspberry Pi Music" would make things less confusing that calling it what it actually is.

As for expansions of the brand, we don't comment on future plans. You therefore have no idea as to what the future for the Raspberry Pi brand holds and hence are in no position to speculate about what we might or might not need to do in future.

You are the only person I have seen who seems to think that we shouldn't offer multiple products, both hardware and software, under the Raspberry Pi brand

No, I seem to recall someone inside the organization mentioning they wanted to use some 5 letter word. Now what was their name . . .

But, seriously, just because you don't see a lot of talk doesn't mean there isn't a problem.

You keep claiming that there is a problem, but you admit that there aren't many people saying so. Where is the evidence for your claim that our branding causes confusion? You have repeatedly claimed that it does, but have failed to provide a single example of it actually happening.

which we also use for publishing magazines (have a look inside a copy of the Magpi)

Your statement is self-contradictory. You need only look at the cover of the magazine to see it has a different brand: Magpi. And if you do look inside, how many of the articles are about the software that doesn't run on Raspberry Pi hardware? Again, as the Raspberry Pi brand exists today, it is not a software brand. Either you change it more to become one, or you re-brand/sub-brand in a way that makes clear how important the different software components are (a la Raspbian).

Look inside the cover - it is a product of Raspberry Pi Press. As opposed to the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Or Raspberry Pi Trading. Or the Raspberry Pi Zero. Or the Raspberry Pi Desktop. Do you see what we did there? We took a brand - "Raspberry Pi" - and put other words after it to describe the product or enterprise in question. It seems to work - as indeed it does for ...

Consider Richard Branson's Virgin brand

Let's not keep multiplying entities. Suffice it to say that, like Apple and most other companies, Virgin operates as an umbrella brand over a ton of other sub-brands that are easy to distinguish and place in their respective markets.

Most of which are called "Virgin" *generic name of thing* - Virgin Records, Virgin Trains, Virgin Cola etc. Does that look at all familiar in the context of the paragraph above? And the ones which aren't a generic name are rather confusing - can you remember without Googling what "Virgin Vie" was? (It was a cosmetics brand, and so successful that it no longer exists - do you not think that "Virgin Cosmetics" might have been more memorable?)

Remind me again, what was Sinclair's software brand?

According to Wikipedia, Sinclair BASIC. It simply isn't a parity comparison because they didn't seem to actually have software that was portable to other machines. That's a big part of where the water gets muddy when it comes to what people are supposed to understand the Raspberry Pi brand to be.

Sinclair's brand was "Sinclair". "BASIC" was the name of a generic programming language offered on most personal computers at the time. The only thing that distinguished Sinclair's version in branding terms was the word "Sinclair" at the front. Just as the thing that distinguishes our desktop from other versions is the words "Raspberry Pi" at the front...

And as for Apple, while MacOS and OSX may now be brands, for the first 15 years or so of the Macintosh, the OS was simply called "System" - hardly a strong brand name, and not one of which the vast majority of their customers were even aware.

You realize you're supporting my point, don't you? Yes, a system company like Apple had no need for a special public brand for their Macintosh OS when it was an isolated product. Once that stopped being the case, it made sense for them to start to manage the complexity by starting to label things better. Where do you think they'd be today if that hadn't done that?

My argument is that Raspberry Pi has dipped their toes in that same water by putting out software that doesn't run on Raspberry Pi hardware. That's an important milestone. It should be handled with more intention that is currently the case.

But Apple do not put out software that runs on anything other than Apple hardware. Their Macintosh OS has never stopped being an "isolated product", to use your terms - it can only be purchased with Apple hardware, and can only (if you respect their license agreement...) run on Apple hardware. So by your argument, they had no need to rebrand it anyway.

And everything they sell - hardware, software - is sold as an Apple product. Yes, they have different product names - as do we. But it seems to me that your argument is that "Desktop" is not a suitable term to describe our desktop software; in spite of you presumably being perfectly happy with Apple calling their OS "MacOS" - i.e. they took the name of the thing ("OS"), and put the name of their product ("Mac") in front of it. A bit like taking the name of the thing ("Desktop"), and putting the name of the product ("Raspberry Pi") in front of it... And as for "OSX" - that's nothing but the name of the thing plus its version number - it's "System" brought ever so slightly up to date.

I'm sorry, but I simply don't see what point you are trying to make here. You claim that we need to establish a separate sub-brand for our software because our current lack of one is causing confusion - but you provide no evidence for such confusion even existing, and your examples of other companies who are doing "the right thing" in terms of sub-branding are, as far as I can see, exactly analogous to what we are doing anyway.

Calling the product "the Raspberry Pi Desktop" achieves two important things; it tells people what the product is (a "Desktop"), and tells them where it comes from ("Raspberry Pi"). I can't see any concrete suggestions from you as to either why that is causing confusion, or how said hypothetical confusion would be alleviated by calling it something else, so I can't see much point in continuing this discussion.

[spl23]

All I want is 64 bit version of Debian for the Pi with whatever additions it needs to support Pi hardware goodies.

To get back on topic...

As we have said repeatedly on this point, the supposed benefits of a 64-bit OS running on a piece of hardware with only 1GB of RAM are somewhat vague. We have always said that we are open to producing a 64-bit version of the OS, but that it comes with the very significant cost that it would only run on the more recent Pi hardware. At present we are able to ship one OS image that will run on every Pi ever sold; if we were to produce a 64-bit image, we would either orphan Pi 0 and PI 1 devices, or we would need to build, maintain and support two different images, with the attendant potential for actual confusion between them. (As opposed to the hypothetical confusion mentioned by m'learned friend above... )

For us to make a step with those downsides - which are very significant in terms of our software offering - we would need to be convinced that there were significant, noticeable advantages to end-users from moving to a 64-bit OS. We've asked for people to provide us with any evidence they have of such advantages - benchmarking results and the like - but nothing has been forthcoming. If such convincing evidence does appear, we would look again at this issue, but for now, the costs of moving to a 64-bit OS outweigh any potential advantages. If people want to try 64-bit versions of Debian, they exist; they just don't come from us, and we don't at present support them.

[Heater]

spl23,

We've asked for people to provide us with any evidence they have of such advantages - benchmarking results and the like - but nothing has been forthcoming.

Sure it has. Everytime this subject comes up I mention that some software is built with the assumption of 64 bit pointers and makes heavy use of 64 bit ints. Examples are the Cockroach database: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/ and Mongo DB.

I have been using bunch of Pi as a CockroachDB cluster. Having pi64 available means I don't have to make hacks to the cockroach sources and rebuild it for 32 bits. Naturally software that makes extensive use of 64 bit pointers and ints suffers a larger performance penalty on 32 bit machines than much other software.

Having said all that. I am in no hurry for the Pi foundation to build and support a 64 bit OS. There are already a few other options available for those of us tinkering with esoteric things.

[spl23]

spl23,

We've asked for people to provide us with any evidence they have of such advantages - benchmarking results and the like - but nothing has been forthcoming.

Sure it has. Everytime this subject comes up I mention that some software is built with the assumption of 64 bit pointers and makes heavy use of 64 bit ints. Examples are the Cockroach database: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/ and Mongo DB.

I have been using bunch of Pi as a CockroachDB cluster. Having pi64 available means I don't have to make hacks to the cockroach sources and rebuild it for 32 bits. Naturally software that makes extensive use of 64 bit pointers and ints suffers a larger performance penalty on 32 bit machines than much other software.

Fine, but can you actually quantify the difference in performance between 32 and 64 bit versions? As in providing performance benchmarks which show a significant, consistent, repeatable improvement of one over the other? If so, what is the performance delta? 5%? 50%? 500%?

Because that's the information which helps make this decision. A 10% speed-up, for example, on some relatively obscure applications which aren't used by many users is unlikely to justify the overhead of maintaining multiple images. A 50% speed-up on something like Scratch probably would.

[jahboater]

If there is no intention of allowing users to run 64-bit programs, perhaps the description should be changed:

"1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core processor"

anyone buying a 3B+ thinking they can use the 64-bits is going to be sadly disappointed.

Its no good keep saying there are several 64-bit Debian ports available to use.
They are simply not as good as Raspbian!
Look at the time its taking for them to support the 3B+ (do any yet?)

ARMv6 forever

[Heater]

spl23,

Fine, but can you actually quantify the difference in performance between 32 and 64 bit versions?

No.

To do that for my case of interest at the moment, CockroachDB, I would have to make three new Raspbian SD cards, tweak the Cockroach source and build system and reinstall it. Then cook up some kind of benchmark to compare 32 bit Cockroach on Raspbian and 64 bit Cockroach on pi64. Then the results may well come in with 10% and you will say "See, not much difference, not worth going to 64 bits for".

Ain't got the time or enthusiasm for all that.

Anyway, it misses the point I was trying to make. It was easier for me to install Pi64 and Cockroach on it than having to hack Cockroach around to run on the Pi.

Like I said, I'm quite happy enough with Raspbian for all else I do with a Pi.

Also, what has this 32/64 bit debate got to do with this thread. Somebody has taken the trouble to get some 64 bit OSs running on the Pi. That is very nice of them and great stuff. What the Pi Foundation does with Raspbian is beside the point.

[droleary]

To get back on topic...

Yeah, I'll take a break from the branding tangent for a day to say . . .

As we have said repeatedly on this point, the supposed benefits of a 64-bit OS running on a piece of hardware with only 1GB of RAM are somewhat vague.

The fact is that 64-bit is the direction most everyone else is trending. It's like IPv6. It's not about justifying it to bean counters with 5% (or whatever) speedup or any other forest-for-the-trees metrics. It will one day start to cost more to maintain 32-bit support than use the economies of scale that have shifted things to 64-bit. That day may come well before 2038. I think most people would be satisfied to know simply when the RPi plans to fully support their 64-bit processors.

Or, really, any 64-bit processors. If there's any intention of trying to re-position Raspberry Pi as a software brand, maybe the "Desktop" distribution should be the proving ground for a full 64-bit release. Then you can settle on whether it makes sense to roll that same change out with the RPi 4, or 5, or something later.

[Heater]

jahboater,

...anyone buying a 3B+ thinking they can use the 64-bits is going to be sadly disappointed.

How so? I'm using all 64 bits of a 3B+. Not disappointed at all.

Its no good keep saying there are several 64-bit Debian ports available to use. They are simply not as good as Raspbian!
Look at the time its taking for them to support the 3B+ (do any yet?)

It's very good to mention 64 bit ports are available. And very nice of people to take the time and trouble to do that and release their work. Some might like to kick the tyres on them. For whatever reason.

Do read the OP.

"Both are also booting on the 3b plus."

[epoch1970]

There is this thing called Docker. It has a certain slant towards 64-bits, and the way I see it it's more or less the successor to apt and systemd.

I can't tell you the speedup of a container under 64, I don't care. But I can tell you about my own slow-down trying to setup a 64 bit "raspbian-equivalent" system.

Upholding 32-bit as the standard was ok 2 years ago. I wouldn't do that for 2 more years.

[feelslikeautumn]

I don't mind raspbian sticking to armhf. I do mind that the use of other distros (armhf and arm64) is actively discouraged by members of the Pi team and repeated by others on this forum. As somebody who has spent a little bit of time trying to help people use other distros it is extremely annoying. There are plenty of arm64 distros available, many of them work on the 3B+. Why not support and encourage them instead of repeatedly talking them down?