I recently bought a new computer. AMD Athlon 4400+ X2, 64bit
but the OS it came with? Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium ( 32-bit)
[ why do they have to have such long names? compare with Leopard, Solaris10,VL5.8 ]
And The highest RAM i could get in a home machine was 2GB, shared with the graphics card,.
So for most people buying new machines, they may get processors with 64bits but the memory and OS are still not stellar.
Personally i think it would be amazing to have a 64 bit version of VL. but really lets be pragmatic here, if i had more time to contribute, my priority is to build and test packages. But if some one else can give me a script to run, i will gladly donate my time and my machine's time.
This is not just a statement. some time back i had written a script to build Enlightenment packages and ran into some hardware issues, so i gave it to others, and the packages i got back were good. soon the E17 team released their own script, and then others on the web released them too.
So just between the people on this thread we already have atleast 6 64 bit machines.
Here is my advice to those who want 64 bit VL.
1. start a poll and ask how many people can donate time on their machine, and donate time to test a 64 bit package.
2. if you see enough response, get the build scripts together, and share them with the volunteers. Again remember you dont have to write the scripts yourself from scratch, look hard enough and youll find them. in most cases it is just a change of some flags. and VL is a fairly well automated build. you just need to get the slack dependencies right [ and the scripts for that].
3. pretty soon all the volunteers will buzz with activity and you will have a testable alpha build. seed that to more testers and 64bit VL would have taken its baby steps

.
I am happy that some one took the initiative to bring this topic to discussion. Now one more small step needs to be taken, actually three small steps, listed above.
cheers
ram