Alternative option for solving Fedora i686 vs geode problems

[Jon Nettleton]

> 2) FESCo (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee) is dealing with the
> issue upstream [1][2] in Fedora with the view of getting it fixed
> upstream for F-14 or at the very least clarified. It was agreed in
> F-12 that the Geode LX would be supported and that decision wasn't
> discussed otherwise. Please add to the conversation on the ticket or
> the list. It might be worth seeing the outcome of this before we go
> and reinvent the wheel again.

I think sitting around and waiting to see the outcome of a very
unclear situation is possibly disastrous.  Why not hash out a few
ideas while there is still wiggle room in the decision making process?
 The way I see it we have a few uncertainties right now.

1)  Will there be actual support for the Geode processor in F14?  The
official stance is yes, however after reading that thread there seems
to be some dissension in the ranks.

2)  If it is supported, what is the performance impact of using
emulated instructions?

3)  Will this all get solidified in time-frame that gives OLPC a warm
fuzzy feeling about basing their next release on F14?

The way I see it, OLPC and SugarLabs need some automated performance
testing to verify that using emulated instructions do not slow things
down an unacceptable amount.  Even for this testing to be done the
patches and recompilation of at least core packages need to be done.
We don't need all the bells and whistles but the short-list is kernel,
glibc, gstreamer, xorg, alsa, python, sugar.  Fedora's dev cycle is 6
months so if it is going to take longer than 2 months ( of course this
can be discussed ) it is probably worth the effort to scope out some
alternative paths forward.

I am at the point where I already need some GUI testing tools to move
forward in my graphics card performance development.  I will
definitely need some help putting together use case scenarios.  Anyone
else have any time to work on this?

-Jon