Why are there only i686 and i586 Version of glibc and kernel? -- not "lite" (386/486 @ 400MHz+, 256MB RAM)

[Bryan J. Smith]

Leonard den Ottolander wrote:  
> i386 still being around would be a reason to not even bump the minimum
> architecture to i486. But I am not sure if Fedora/RHEL would be the
> proper distributions to put on such devices. I'd assume the main
>  packages (kernel and glibc) need to be rebuild (or replaced in the
> case of glibc) for such devices anyway, looking at their size...

Ever seen a i386/486 core running at 400MHz?
With 256MB of RAM?
And a 20GB disk?

I think the thing I'm having trouble conveying here is that there are
literally dozens of companies selling systems just like this.  Modern
speeds, moderately sized memory and disk, with a low-power,
"system-on-a-chip" that is a i386/486 core.

This isn't about a "lite" distro.
These systems have the "performance/resources" covered.
We're not talking about memory, disk or performance limitations. 
We're talking about ISA compatibility.

You don't hear about it because you don't see it.
But there are black box solutions out there (millions).
And it's much nicer if a distro supports them out-of-the-box.

I'm not talking a "lite" distro.
I'm talking about a i686 optimized distro that runs on i386 ISA.
Heck, those i386/486 cores are pretty optimized themselves.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith, E.I. -- b.j.smith at ieee.org