P2 CPU "class, " but 386/486 ISA "core" are commonplace -- embedded developers use what they know ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

Although a very simplistic viewpoint, eWeek's Peter Coffee pointed out
this exact phenomenon:  
  http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1607953,00.asp  

Far too many times, developers plunk a full, desktop-level OS on
embedded systems _when_ the have the CPU, memory and disk resources to
run it.  As an engineer who worked years in this industry, I can tell
you this with certainty.  That's why many projects just opt for the
extra goodies in an embedded board -- so they can run a full-up OS.

So, again, I re-iterate that Fedora Core should continue to be at least
an i486 ISA compatible distro.  To keep engineering support at a minimum
on embedded platforms that have the power and resources to run a full
distro.  It's more than just install-time, but service-time too.

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