Microsoft will be dropping support for 32x on Windows 10

[John Sellers]

Is OpenOffice preparing for the day in the near future when Microsoft drops support for 32x on Windows 10?

[John_Ha]

Can you point to a reference that Microsoft is considering dropping support for 32 bit applications?

I see that Microsoft no longer allows Windows 10 32 bit Operating System to be installed as an operating system on new PCs but that is very different from dropping support for running 32-bit applications under Windows 10 64 bit Operating System.

I very much doubt that a 64 bit version of AOO will ever be released as there is little or no development effort to do so. AOO for MacOS is 64 bit as is LibreOffice for Windows.

[John Sellers]

All I can say for sure is that if OpenOffice does not commit to and develop a 64x execrable, one day they are going to face significant consequences.

I apologize for coming on so strong with no facts to backing it up, but there are consequences to continuing with yesterday's architecture, both for individuals and for industry.

Examples:
Once burned, twice shy. I had a substantial investment in the iPad 32 bit environment. I lost a lot of apps and established critical infrastructure in the orbit of my personal processes when iPad switched to a 64x and left me swinging in the wind at the end of a rope.

Also, Intel's x86 CPU was an unfortunate deployment in the industry. There were a number of unintended consequences that hardly noticed or discussed in the public discourse. The fact that the x86 segmented namespace of the CPUs where the segments were smaller than bit-map display screens grossly complicated and delayed the advent of graphic displays of PCs by several years. We should all move forward to the newer technologies.

Often you can't tell what the consequences of sticking with a technology, but if it is less capable than current technology, sooner or later, there will be important things that newer technology can do that the older technology can't keep up with.

The fact that apple started early with a flat namespace by using the Motorola 68000 is the primary reason that there is such a big difference in Apple graphics and PC graphics history. Except for that, the Office of the Future apps in the PC world would be much more advanced today.

Today, all new systems are 64x, and one point or another 32x is going to go by the wayside. Lately Microsoft has been very aggressive about moving forward with their software and are more frequently dropping support for the old in favor of the new. These days they are more prone to forcing users into the mode that they want.

Because support for 32x is actually a duplication of effort in CPU technology and costs money to keep going, sooner or later Microsoft will completely dump 32x. It is true that there are a lot of users that still use 32x technology, but that group is shrinking while 64x use is growing by leaps and bounds. One day soon, 32x technology will not matter much to Microsoft.

One does not have to know the future to understand there will be many unpredictable and consequential consequences. The only prevention that we have at our disposal is to be systematic as possible and move forward ASAP to whatever is the most recent, well established architecture and technology.

There are systems like ARM64 that don't do 32x and have to emulate it. AMD is taking over from Intel in terms of speed and running away. My new laptop with the 4800H is several times as fast as my last, once considered very fast i7 PC. That sort of thing drives the demise of 32x.

Clearly, today that is 64x has taken over 32x.

Consider:
https://www.eejournal.com/article/intel ... g-retiree/

As for OpenOffice, I have used it for quite a while, but if in the next 6 months or so I don't see a solid 64x version come around. I am going to dump it.

[Villeroy]

LibreOffice is the new OpenOffice.