Re: [RFC/PATCH 00/59] Make common x86 arch area for i386 and x86_64

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>]

* Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> We've started to notice that the i386 build gets broken now that most 
> developers tend to have newer CPU's and run mostly on x86-64 (and yes, 
> that's me too), and while I don't think unifying things will guarantee 
> that doesn't happen in the future, it will hopefully at least help 
> make it not get much *worse*.

actually, even for 'cutting edge' testers, the number of 32-bit x86 
systems outnumber the number of 64-bit test-systems by a factor of 5. 
For distributions with real users, the ratio is closer to 1:10...

so i typically get bugs reported on 32-bit first, and for 64-bit it is 
usually only reported if the bug is 64-bit /only/. That basic property 
is true for both upstream, -rt and rawhide kernels.

Andi's x86 merge tree /does/ break quite often on 32-bit, but that's not 
really due to testers, that's due to Andi being primarily the 64-bit 
maintainer ;)

	Ingo