To make Debian really useable on i386, we need
to emulate some i486 instructions. Here's a
first forward port of a i486 emulator, but it's
currently broken:
http://lug-owl.de/~jbglaw/software/i486emu/
It's quite some PITA to maintain some
(hundred) independant patches which apply
to a constantly moving target (think Linux
kernel...).
http://lug-owl.de/~jbglaw/software/gQuilt/
will solve that, once it is finished.