On Sun, Oct 11, 2026 at 07:19:46PM +0200, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior wrote: > On 2026-10-09 20:13:55 [-0600], Tancred wrote: > > > > > > On 10/8/26 03:07, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior wrote: > > > where certain workloads widely > > > move to x32 and use it exclusively. In the meantime Debian introduced a > > > patch to disable x32 by default (so it has to be enabled at boot time on > > > the command line) because they are afraid of the increased attack > > > surface. Fedora as far as I tell has X32 disabled (looking at 7.0-rc5 > > > rpm in rawhide). > > > > > > Since there is practically no real use for x32 > > > > I only recently discovered x32 and built a Desktop (with all daemons and > > utilities running 10-30% smaller and some a bit faster, with 64 bit > > libraries for eg. Firefox.) My experiment should definitely not decide > > anything, but how much real-world use would be sufficient to justify > > continued presence (more complex compat code)? > > "a bit faster" needs actual numbers to justify. One examples was quicker > gcc but I don't see a x32 compile farm leveraging this benefit.
FWIW I do build my ARM cross-compilers in a32 because they're generally ~10-15% faster than in a64. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the same on x86 because tools such as compilers very likely use pointers a lot. In a build farm it certainly makes a difference, possibly not sufficient to justify keeping a kernel port, but it's just to illustrate one valid use case. Willy
