os.major etc. on Linux

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Friday May 13 2016 10:11:50 Brandon Allbery wrote:

> Remember that OS X goes to great lengths to hide 32 vs. 64 bit
> distinctions; 32 bit OS X kernels were perfectly capable of running 64 bit
> binaries on 64-bit CPUs, at least on Intel. So some of this comes down to

True. 

> "Apple so decreed and it's much easier to play along than to try to make OS
> X act differently". In particular, see how arch(1) works.

According to `man arch`:

           i386    32-bit intel
           x86_64  64-bit intel

which seems perfectly standard (though amd64 would probably have been more accurate than x86_64)

I don't see anywhere though that i386 can also be interpreted as "32-bit or 64-bit (or whatever) Intel". That's what I find confusing, not that the 32-bit codeword refers back to the i386 CPU and the 64-bit codeword tries its best to avoid using the name of a non-Intel CPU ;)

R