For example, on my newly built lfs system: $ ls -lh {2014-04-27-3.14.1-x86_64,2014-04-27-3.14.1-i686}/bin/{xz,bash,sync} -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 806K Apr 26 23:54 2014-04-27-3.14.1-i686/bin/bash -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 747K Apr 27 04:25 2014-04-27-3.14.1-x86_64/bin/bash -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22K Apr 26 23:54 2014-04-27-3.14.1-i686/bin/sync -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 24K Apr 27 04:25 2014-04-27-3.14.1-x86_64/bin/sync -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 67K Apr 26 23:54 2014-04-27-3.14.1-i686/bin/xz -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 64K Apr 27 04:25 2014-04-27-3.14.1-x86_64/bin/xz The "i686" version files are bigger than the "x86_64". Why ? Thanks.