[SLL] 32 bit distro that supports 4GB ram with stock kernel

[Eric Kahklen]

Thanks for the insight :)  Since this is only a laptop, I'll never go 
over 4 GB on this machine.  As far as I understand it, the latest stable 
version of Ubuntu's stock kernel only supports 3 GB of ram and you need 
to recompile the kernel for larger support.  I was hoping the never 
version supported 4 GB's out of the box vs. reconfiguring the kernel.  
If there are easier solution vs. a kernel hack please let me know.

Thanks,
Eric

Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 20:16 -0700, Eric Kahklen wrote:
>   
>> Does anyone know if Hardy Heron supports 4GB of ram with the stock 
>> kernel?  I am getting ready to do a clean install on my Thinkpad and 
>> want to capture my full 4GB of ram.  If not, do any of the other distros 
>> support 4GB of ram with their stock kernel?
>>     
>
> Just about any 32bit kernel is going to support up /to/ 4 gigs of ram,
> although you lose some to PCI address spacing.  It's when you go over 4
> gigs that you start needing something special on 32bit, and that
> "special" comes in the form of Physical Address Extension, the hack on
> 32bit platforms to address things greater than 4 gigs.  How far depends
> further on more kernel config, as there is another limit at around
> 16gigs where you need what many distros call 'hugemem' to get past 16
> and up to 32/64 I think (which really, a 32bit platform with that much
> memory is just silly, go 64bit if you're going to need to address that
> much ram as you'll likely need to address more at any single time than a
> 32bit process can no matter what the kernel config).
>
>   

-- 
Eric Kahklen
Lynnwood, WA
206-595-2934