[conspire] Quick Question 64bit vs 32 bit Kernel

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Jose Medeiros (jose.medeiros at gmail.com):

> Since Rick runs a Mac Laptop I thought I would also ask on the Mac
> version of the command.

On my PPC/G3 Apple iBook 2.2:

$ uname -a 
Linux nextstep 2.6.17-10-powerpc #2 Fri Oct 13 16:37:41 UTC 2006 ppc GNU/Linux
$

(I.e., Macintoshes don't necessarily run MacOS.  ;-> )

> Also the Intel core duo is only a 32bit and the core 2 duo is 64 bit,
> and I some how want to verify what is installed just for the sake of
> knowing.

If you ever want to know whether a machine based on an Intel/AMD CPU
is capable of x86_64 operation, boot a live-CD Linux distro with a Linux
kernel at least 2.6.16 or later (any recent CD will do), get a shell
prompt, do "less /proc/cpuinfo", and see if the "flags" line includes
"lm" (long mode).

Whether any given loaded operating system on that machine _uses_ x86_64
long-mode addressing is, of course, a different issue.