> Linux has been written on a little endian architecture: intel. In
> little-endian mode
> linux is well tested, the kernel works perfectly. If you chose
> big-endian mode, linux
> is still operational, but some parts of the kernel will be broken.
> Drivers, filesystems etc...
> must be written in a big-endian compatible way, all 16bits, 32bits
> access to
> hardware or to external data structures must be converted using some
> macros
> defined in the linux kernel. A lot of drivers were written specifically
> for intel and are not big-endian
> compatible...
> So linux is more reliable in little endian.
Wrong. Linux/MIPS is running on both little and big endian platforms
and it's equally reliable. In a few cases endianess fixes have been
necessary but in the large picture of things endianess is a neglegtible
issue. Having said that, some of the embedded people have choosen
a specific endianess for their platforms because it saves them a
significant amount of CPU. Nothing that couldn't be solved in hardware ...
Ralf
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