Denise H. G. wrote:
I've switched to FreeBSD for my desktop with 4G memory...
>
> Unnecessary fear :
>
> $ sysctl kern.version
> kern.version=OpenBSD 4.8-current (GENERIC.MP) #547: Tue Dec 7 23:16:34 MST
2010
> dera...@i386.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC.MP
>
> $
>
> load averages: 0.76, 1.14, 1.06
>
>
> hostname 13:27:52
> 49 processes: 1 running, 45 idle, 1 zombie, 2 on processor
> CPU0 states: 2.0% user, 0.0% nice, 1.6% system, 0.0% interrupt, 96.4%
idle
> CPU1 states: 3.8% user, 0.0% nice, 1.2% system, 0.0% interrupt, 95.0%
idle
> Memory: Real: 321M/610M act/tot Free: 2651M Swap: 0K/8189M used/tot
>
> $ dmesg | grep mem
> RTC BIOS diagnostic error 11<memory_size>
> real mem = 3487125504 (3325MB)
> avail mem = 3420016640 (3261MB)
> spdmem0 at iic0 addr 0x50: 2GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-10600
> spdmem1 at iic0 addr 0x52: 2GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-10600
> kqemu: kqemu version 0x00010300 loaded, max locked mem=1702696kB
I think Bodzar's point here is that you don't need 4GB, especially on a
desktop.
Sure, your car can do 230 kph, but how often do you ever get over 150?
Unless you're running a very busy database server or a crazy web server,
I don't think you'll ever need much above 2GB.
I have 2GB in most of my i386 and amd64 laptops and servers. None of my
machines ever touch the swap. In fact, most of the time I have 50% FREE
RAM. On my development laptop I typically run a Seamonkey Browser with
50 tabs and Mail (400MB), about 20 terminals (half of which are SSHed to
remote machines), Inkscape, Gimp, Postgresql locally for dev,
ruby-sinatra, etc. and I've never been over 1.2GB. I do run cwm as my
window manager. So lets say for shits and giggles that you're running
KDE or something bloated like that, then maybe you'll use another gig.
So what, you're still under 3GB.
Save yourself time and headaches and just run OpenBSD stable or
snapshots. Compiling kernels is a waste of time when you're doing it for
performance reasons. I used to do this shit about 8 years ago just to
eek out a little more performance, so I thought. I was also coming from
Linux/FreeBSD to OpenBSD at that time. I finally realized that my time
is better spent doing other things. Now I run OpenBSD exclusively on all
four of my systems and my life is easy.
One last thing: when developers say don't do something, they know best
so listen. Compiling in BIGMEM is bad if they told you no.
