Chris Adams <cmadams(a)hiwaay.net> writes:
IIRC, I asked about this a few years ago and got told that there was
a
performance hit (not big but measurable) for running the 64 bit kernel
and 32 bit userland. Maybe that was wrong or is now outdated.
It should be the other way around -- 64 bit kernel should be faster.
The only downside is that the kernel may take a little more memory,
but that isn't really a problem for non-embedded systems.
What are the chances GRUB/syslinux could be taught to look at a few
special CPU flags (can you fetch the important flags from real mode?)
and only present "compatible" (as determined by config arguments, not
GRUB/syslinux poking into kernels) boot options? That would help the
LiveCD case as well. You could have both 32-PAE and 64 kernels on the
CD and choose at boot time, although that would take up a large amount
of space (so maybe not feasible for LiveCD).
That would be rather neat. Tricky, but neat.
/Benny