Computing desk
< April 27	<< Mar \| April \| May >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 28[edit]

Why is Linux leaving IA32 faster than Windows?[edit]

The reason I'd expect it to be the other way round is simply that Linux has a long history of being useful for otherwise obsolete hardware relative to Windows. I've noticed Chrome doesn't even exist for IA32 on Linux but it still does on Windows. Why the disparity?--Leon (talk) 13:44, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I imagine Linux will support IA32 for quite a while, and perhaps longer than Windows. But you're not really asking about Linux or Windows, but rather: Chrome.

Any application vendor has to choose how many versions to support, for how many platforms and platform variants. And since the Windows share of the desktop is probably still substantially larger than Linux's, a vendor might decide to support more variants for Windows than for Linux. (Some application vendors, of course, go to the extreme of supporting zero variants for Linux. :-( ) —Steve Summit (talk) 16:20, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not asking about Chrome, rather using it as a measure of IA32 support for Linux generally. Many distros are only available for x64.--Leon (talk) 16:51, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

With respect, using Chrome as a measure of IA32 support for linux is... a poor idea. You should not use Chrome (nor any other user-space application) as a proxy- or stand-in for your assessment of how well-supported Linux is.

It is important to use terminology correctly. The name "linux" is frequently - but incorrectly - used to lump together a huge group of unrelated projects. When used correctly, "linux" refers to a very specific thing: "a clone of the operating system Unix" that "also runs on a multitude of other processor architectures." Linux itself still does support IA32.

While we are being sticklers for terminology: the official source - Intel - defines IA-32 thus: "IA-32 Architecture refers to systems based on 32-bit processors generally compatible with the Intel Pentium® II processor."

It turns out that this is insufficiently precise for an operating-system programmer. The official Linux documentation is more specific: x86-specific Documentation introduces several more precise ways to describe specific CPU models and architecture-families: namely, CPU architectures are refined using cpuinfo feature flags and x86 topologies. If this sounds like gibberish, ... I think your take-home message ought to be: wow, when reading the actual official documentation for linux, it is describing a very different thing apart from the thing I often mean when I use the word "linux" incorrectly.

If you use the term "linux" to refer to "many other things that are not linux, but are sometimes associated with linux..." and then you proceed to use that to make assessments about linux, you will have an incorrect and invalid assessment.

From the official source - Linux - kernel.org - "What is Linux?"

From a totally different and unrelated official source - Chrome - The browser built by Google.

Even so-called "distros" are not linux. From the official source - again - "If you're new to Linux, you don't want to download the kernel, which is just a component in a working Linux system. Instead, you want what is called a distribution of Linux, which is a complete Linux system." You can describe the state-of-the-industry support for a specific CPU architecture, or computer-system, by a third-party distributor - and you might well notice that many distributors have deprioritized 32-bit Intel architectures - but that's also not a good gauge for whether linux supports 32-bit Intel architectures.

Chrome is not part of linux; Chrome is not made by the same people who create and manage linux; Chrome is not a suitable way to estimate any particular capability of linux; Chrome is not an officially-approved way to evaluate architecture-support for linux. If you attempt to use Chrome (or any other stand-in) in this way, the error is technically on your part.

Nimur (talk) 20:37, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think the primary reason for this, is that Linux has always been designed to support multiple architectures of multiple architecture sizes. That means that the entire eco system is designed to take multiple architectures into account from the ground up and that makes it much easier to deploy to more than 1 architecture, which is why people do. In the Windows landscape, distributing applications for multiple architectures requires much more manual labor and because ppl are traditionally lazy it tends to just not happen unless required.

Another reason may be that windows has a very long support cycle (esp within a business setting). This 'maximum backwards compatibility' tradition has its benefits but also downsides. A lot of old apps are never updated for long periods of time, because that takes money and then eventually it can become very difficult to drag something into the future. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:04, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Suspected fraud emails[edit]

Suspected fraud emails for "will donor" from Endowment@wikimedia.org received at stevenow@sonic.net 210428-0800.

This should be reported to donate@wikimedia.org RudolfRed (talk) 22:27, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

PHP GUI[edit]

I want to write some cross-platform PHP command line utilities that display information in panels and display forms in dialog boxes. What libraries would people recommend to support such PHP GUIs? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 16:06, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The PHP-GTK is dead, but the See Also section lists some alternatives if you're really determined to use PHP for this purpose. Good luck. --LaserLegs (talk) 16:06, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

and wxPHP is not much less dead — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 17:45, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My day job is building websites using PHP and JavaScript, so I do understand that pure PHP is not really suited to GUIs. Can people suggest any sensible way to build a GUI for a cross-platform PHP command line utility, if there is no web server involved? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 17:52, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DRM[edit]

Does anyone know of software to remove DRM from .m4v videos? 2001:16B8:2C5E:6800:24EF:E70A:4205:59FC (talk) 20:53, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Try rewriting .m4v to .mp4 --Greatder (talk)

Changing the file extensions doesn’t change it’s content... 2001:16B8:2C4E:EB00:C9A5:B938:7A5A:A568 (talk) 19:03, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Video editing software can probably do this. ffmpeg may be able to, if you have the rights to undo the DRM. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:49, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]