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

[Alan Cox]

On Sat, Jun 05, 2004 at 11:01:21PM -0700, Per Bjornsson wrote:
> interfaces can be a real boost for threaded applications, and i386 lacks
> some features (available in i486 and later) that are essentially needed
> for NPTL. Thus this has only now become an important issue. (And it's

Correct - its things like xadd that the 386 lacks, and these are almost
impossible to emulate in user space (and non trivial in kernel space) 
because they are locking operations