Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 9 Jun 2009 11:06:10 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: [benchmark] 1% performance overhead of paravirt_ops on native kernels |
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On Tue, 9 Jun 2009, H. Peter Anvin wrote: > > A major problem is that distros don't seem to be willing to push 64-bit > kernels for 32-bit distros. There are a number of good (and > not-so-good) reasons why users may want to run a 32-bit userspace, but > not running a 64-bit kernel on capable hardware is just problematic.
Yeah, that's just stupid. A 64-bit kernel should work well with 32-bit tools, and while we've occasionally had compat issues (the intel gfx people used to claim that they needed to work with a 32-bit kernel because they cared about 32-bit tools), they aren't unfixable or even all _that_ common.
And they'd be even less common if the whole "64-bit kernel even if you do a 32-bit distro" was more common.
The nice thing about a 64-bit kernel is that you should be able to build one even if you don't in general have all the 64-bit libraries. So you don't need a full 64-bit development environment, you just need a compiler that can generate code for both (and that should be the default on x86 these days).
Linus
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