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New Linux Patches Cleanup Code For Running x86 32-bit Kernels On x86_64 CPUs
As we approach 2025, hopefully none of you are still running x86 32-bit kernels / 32-bit OS software on x86_64 processors, but should you still be into that, there are improvements on the way.
"There are very few 32-bit machines that support KVM, the main exceptions are the "Yonah" Generation Xeon-LV and Core Duo from 2006 and the Atom Z5xx "Silverthorne" from 2008 that were all release just before their 64-bit counterparts. Drop all the 32-bit-only portions and the "#ifdef CONFIG_X86_64" checks of the x86 KVM code and add a Kconfig dependency to only allow building this on 64-bit kernels. Xeon LVs were fascinating back in the day (2006), but understandable in 2025 to be clearing out 32-bit KVM host support while retaining 32-bit guest OS compatibility.
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