[rhelv6-beta-list] The minimum hardware requirement to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a 32-bit, x86 CPU with PAE support.

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 06/16/2010 11:16 PM, Benjamin Franz wrote:
> On 06/16/2010 10:19 AM, Grant Williamson wrote:
>> I am kind of curious on why EL6 32 bit is PAE only. Can anyone shed
>> any light on this, thanks.
>>
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=589332
>>
>>
>
> If I had to speculate, its because supporting code to handle the edge
> case of someone running a 32 bit machine in 2010 that doesn't even
> support PAE was considered  too much of a small-impact use case for
> Redhat to spend money on. They would never gain/keep enough customers
> over it to pay for the investment required to support it for the next
> several years.

Yep.  There is a very significant cost to maintaining an additional
kernel variant.   Reducing the number makes it easier to provide the
support necessary for the variants that are still provided and if you
are running a older system, you are likely to be conservative enough to
run a older release as well.   Remember,  RHEL subscriptions are not
tied to a single release and you can move up to a newer release when the
time is right. 

Rahul