[ubuntu-uk] Increasing start up problems since upgrade to 10.04

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 1:47 PM, Alan Pope <alan at popey.com> wrote:
> HI Liam/Bob
>
> On 11 June 2010 13:44, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 7:54 AM, Bob Giles <thecorfiot at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I am running 32bit Lucid on a Lenovo 3000 N200 laptop with 4Gb ram.
>>
>> If you have a 64-bit chip - which seems /extremely/ likely if the
>> machine takes 4GB - then assuming that you actually want to /use/ all
>> of your 4 gig, you should be running the 64-bit version. 32-bit PC OSs
>> can't access more than about 3¼-3½ gig of RAM; the rest is
>> inaccessible because the address space is occupied by the graphics
>> card & other devices.
>>
>
> Actually you can.
>
> Install linux-generic-image-pae package and you'll get the PAE enabled
> kernel which allows 32-bit Ubuntu to see more than 3 and a bit GB of
> RAM. Over 4GB indeed.

I think PAE is a pretty poor substitute for a flat 4+G memory space.
All it does is page in higher bits of memory, a little like LIM-spec
EMS, AKA Expanded memory, back in the DOS days. It's not the same
thing at all.

Secondly, the x86-32 architecture is notoriously register-starved.
x86-64 has twice as many general-purpose registers, which means that
x86-64 code executes that little bit faster than x86-32 code on the
same CPU.

Given that, unlike on Windows, it's a free upgrade with no real major
drawbacks, I can't see any reason not to go for it.

>> All *three*? What 3 are these?
>
> nvidia-glx-173 - Transitional package for nvidia-glx-173
> nvidia-glx-180 - Transitional package for nvidia-glx-185
> nvidia-glx-96 - Transitional package for nvidia-glx-96
> nvidia-glx-185 - Transitional package for nvidia-glx-185
>
> Four even! :D

Ah, come on, be fair! I *did* specifically mention these and address
the reasons for their existence and why they are basically irrelevant
for a modern 64-bit PC.

-- 
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