I'm sorry, but where did you saw that I said something about i686 *kernel*? I think
that I explicitly mentioned *x86_64* kernel with i686 userland and described why it could
be beneficial for some users with limited memory.
As for security, I don't think that running your own computer in a tightly controlled
environment should be *that* dangerous. At least many users did it for years without
problems. That looks like a scare. In either case it's the user who should decide
what's best for him. I don't think that educated grown-up people should be treated
like babies.
Other distributions might drop it or not, we'll see. At least Debian is not dropping
it yet. But this is a moot point now. After all those discussions I see that nobody really
cares about user interests here. At least in Debian's case they stated that their
users interests is of utmost priority to them in contrast to just useless technical
innovation. And I'm not a proponent of consumerism. So take it lightly.