Re: AMD Geode NOPL emulation for kernel 2.6.36-rc2

[Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>]

> 1) Those enterprise long term distributions aren't going to be
> targeting the Crusoe or Geode. It's not their market. Would they even

See this is the problem. You've forgotten *users*. It's easy to roll a
special kernel, its hell on earth 

> back port, therefore, if it was an issue?
> (This hypothetical anyway as it assuming they have an i686 targeted
> build already. Who does? Centos, RHEL and SUSE Enterprise are all i386
> targeted at the moment for x86.)

Wrong for some packages - and enough to break things. Bits like glibc for
example and chunks of X and proprietary apps.

>. (Again, hypothetical, as they're not targeted at i686!)

See above

> 4) As for proprietary apps, again, is it likely that they're targeting
> i686 already? Or is it far more likely they're compiled for i386 et.
> al.

Lots used -i686 because the compiler people said its faster and it works
on all 686 platforms. Neither of which it turns out is exactly true in
many cases.

> 6) What we are talking about is future distributions, whatever they
> are, that are now or are changing to target i686 which end users will
> ultimately want to migrate to and run.

s/we/you

Getting the stuff right in the current kernel makes it easier to backport
and fix and do tidily. It's not as if NOPL is complicated to emulate.