Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell(a)gmail.com) said:
It's for this reason (and the multilib memory bloat) that I was
really
disappointed to see x32 created.
32bit of an addressable space is a real limitation on modern machines—
and completely reasonable software which is linear in input size is
simply less useful on 32 bit machines.
If it ever comes up that Fedora wants to further limit the usability
of the i686 with older machines (e.g. by adding a SSE2 requirement),
then perhaps it would be instead better to replace i686 with x32...
but otherwise I think it would be really unfortunate to end up
subjecting fedora users to the 32bit vm limits who otherwise might not
be.
Plus, there's the minor "incompatible with every single existing piece of
i686/x86_32 software that exists in the wild." While Fedora isn't directly
targeting the existence of third-party or local software, a new 32-bit
option that breaks it all isn't the most polite. It's why it would be much
more useful for something like spinning up a new embedded target rather than
switching an existing userbase.
Bill