x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)

[drago01]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 7:33 PM, Paul Jakma <paul at dishone.st> wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>
>> Running a 64-bit kernel with a 32-bit userland is a common practice on
>> non-x86 platforms, and non-Linux OS's.
>
> FWIW, it works on Linux too. I ran F10 i386 on a x86_64 kernel for a while.
> About the only thing that doesn't work right is yum wrt kernel updates.
>
>> For a lot of tasks, you simply do not need 64-bit pointers and a 64-bit
>> process address space.  Both executable code and in-memory data structures
>> tend to be smaller on 32-bit.
>
> Indeed.
>
> It would be nice if i386-userspace/x64-kernel were officially support..

such a setup does not make much sense, when your hardware supports
x86_64 not using it for userspace is a waste ....