Changing the default 32-bit x86 arch for Fedora 12

[Andrew Haley]

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bill Nottingham <notting at redhat.com> writes:
>> drago01 (drago01 at gmail.com) said: 
>>> Moving to i686 is fine, non i686 chips are mostly dead (but the
>>> perfomance gain from moving to i686 from i586 is questionable at
>>> best).
> 
>> ... how so? It's consistently 1-2% in reasonable benchmarks (real-world
>> code, albeit cpu-specific).
> 
> I don't understand how this proposal can survive even momentary
> consideration.  We're going to cut off some nontrivial fraction
> of our userbase to get 1-2% speedup for the rest?
> 
> As was already mentioned, the people who need speed are probably
> on x86_64 already.  The x86 builds are for legacy hardware *now*,
> and should be understood as such.

I agree.  This has been quite a bewildering discussion in many
ways.  One of the greatest things about free software distros is
the way we can keep old hardware running, and running *well*.  In
the process, we show that community development is less wasteful
than that of Microsoft et al.  They have their vested interest in
making people throw old but otherwise OK computers into landfill.

x86_64 for the performance seekers, x86 for everyone else.
What's not to like?

Andrew.