>>>> new life to older 486-based computers. Support is widely available
>>>
>>> Here we should change that 486-based to 386-based ... don't limit our
>>> suporting to the lower end ... someone is still using 386 :)
>>
>> Hopefully that will be an option left for hackers only.
>> 386 support cuts into performance and SMP support.
>
> How so? When did you look at the code last time?
Bad WP bit on a 386 - need an extra test at least.
No invlpg instruction - must invalidate the whole cache.
No byte swap instruction - must shift and mask and add/or.
IRQ 13 is used for both SMP and FPU - trouble AFAIK.
The second problem at least could be mostly fixed with
self-modifying kernel code. Nobody cared enough though,
since the 386 is so uncommon.
Most 386 hardware doesn't even have enough memory for normal
Linux distributions. Linux in 2 MB takes some skill.
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