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

[William M. Quarles]

Alan Cox wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 09:06:13PM -0400, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> 
>>Ever seen a i386/486 core running at 400MHz?
>>With 256MB of RAM?
>>And a 20GB disk?
> 
> 
> 386 no not really now, 6117 seems kind of defunct. The AMD Geode GX line
> is 486alike but with roughly pentium instruction set. They run (well the
> older version anyway) Linux rather nicely.
> 
> 
>>I'm talking about a i686 optimized distro that runs on i386 ISA.
>>Heck, those i386/486 cores are pretty optimized themselves.
> 
> 
> Nobody would argue much about 486, but 386 really hurts and I've seen
> no modern embedded core that isnt 486 ISA

OK, especially since a Red Hat developer has said this, then why has Red 
Hat Linux and Fedora Core remained 386 architecture for so many years? 
Why not make it 486 architecture with 686 (or better) scheduling?

Peace,
William