Re:How do you explain it to Joe Sixpack? (Score 1)

Umm, that's a really bad idea. The whole point of requiring a system call was to ensure that the code is evicted from the instruction cache. The call was required in the past, you could simply usually get away without calling it. Usually, that address range wouldn't be in the icache to begin with, if it hadn't held code before - but that's not guaranteed.

In other words, that system call had nothing to do with e.g. NX to begin with, although now they are related.