From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261569AbTI3PLs (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Sep 2003 11:11:48 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261580AbTI3PLs (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Sep 2003 11:11:48 -0400 Received: from pix-525-pool.redhat.com ([66.187.233.200]:5896 "EHLO lacrosse.corp.redhat.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261569AbTI3PLq (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Sep 2003 11:11:46 -0400 Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 16:11:23 +0100 From: Dave Jones To: Jamie Lokier Cc: John Bradford , akpm@osdl.org, torvalds@osdl.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: your mail Message-ID: <20030930151123.GA16397@redhat.com> Mail-Followup-To: Dave Jones , Jamie Lokier , John Bradford , akpm@osdl.org, torvalds@osdl.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <200309300817.h8U8HGrf000881@81-2-122-30.bradfords.org.uk> <20030930133113.GC23333@redhat.com> <200309301410.h8UEAEgJ000652@81-2-122-30.bradfords.org.uk> <20030930145854.GD28876@mail.shareable.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030930145854.GD28876@mail.shareable.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 03:58:54PM +0100, Jamie Lokier wrote: > (Aside: It is quite an anomaly that those cumbersome floating point > instructions are emulated on the older CPUs, yet all the other > instructions aren't emulated. Emulation is very slow, and forcing > userspace to just use different code instead is good, but that's just > as valid for floating point as it is for MMX, cmpxchg etc.) There was a patch around a while back that did 486 emulation on 386 kernels. I think it even made into the Mandrake kernel. > To be fair, the kernel really ought to just say that and halt. That > is a fine compromise. It won't make embedded systems folks completely > happy, because if you've only got 2MB of NVRAM for your whole kernel > _and_ filesystem including user data (think PDA or cellphone), then a > hundred bytes here or there is actually worth trimming. With such tight constraints, why not just use 2.4 (or even 2.2) which has much lower memory usage and diskspace requirements ? Dave -- Dave Jones http://www.codemonkey.org.uk