[email protected] wrote: > At the installfest at the book store, someone was commenting that there > was a problem getting or installing or updating 64 bit Ubuntu installs, > so even though they had a 64bit cpu, they were installing the 32 bit > version. > > Is this true? How true? :) When I get to a system that'll hold 4 > gigs of ram or more, I'd like to be able to make use of it all, but now > I'm wondering.
Not sure if there really is a problem, but one way to take advantage of >=4GB RAM with 32-bit apps is to use a PAE (Physical Address Extension) kernel. All the apps stay at 32-bit, but the kernel provides memory segmentation transparently so that each app thinks it has a full 4GB of RAM to itself. The kernel hides all the other stuff. This is what I use on my desktop system so that I can share programs between my laptop which is strictly 32-bit and my desktop which can run 64-bit. My original desktop install was 32-bit on another machine so when I migrated to a new motherboard/CPU I would have had to do a re-install to get 64-bit. Instead, I installed the PAE kernel and didn't have to change anything else except a video driver because it was a proprietary nVidia module. Now I can wait until whenever I feel I'm ready for 64-bit but still able to take advantage of >=4GB RAM. Gus -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-newbie
