Surprise! Programs *don't*, unless they are written explicitly for
Linux.
> In fact, on most Unices the information is *less* useful than it is on
> Linux. A quick survey of UNIX variants I have access to do vary
> widely with respect to what uname -m reports, so I'm not sure what
> 'common' behavior those programs could rely on. [IRIX reports CPU
> board type; AIX reports the machine ID number; Solaris returns the
> hardware configuration type].
>
> FYI:
> AIX: 006027974C00
> Solaris: sun4m
> IRIX: IP20
> Linux: i586
>
> what exactly does 'i586' break that wouldn't be horridly broken on any
> of the above architectures (especially AIX!) anyway?
It seems that for every processor generation, programs break this
way. However, what you point out here might be a misunderstanding on
my part: maybe the right thing to do is to implement "uname -p" and
have *it* return "i386".
I just checked my Solaris box, and you're right: uname -m returns
"sun4m" and uname -p returns the processor architecture (sparc).
-hpa