On 3/28/07, Luca Dionisi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Moreover, I think that the physical RAM limit is more important > than the virtual memory one. At the very moment. > Because rarely a single process needs more than 3 GB of memory. > Instead, more frequently a PC runs many processes at a time, > and so the total amount of used memory could grow up.
Well, everything depends on what is considered "important" :) RAM is important for OS as a whole, for kernel. With lots of RAM kernel avoids extra swapping to disk. In fact, even in 32-bit mode the linux kernel can use RAM above 4G, there's special option for that in the configuration. On the contrary, virtual memory limit affects every single application. You are right, most of applications don't need 3G of memory. But it happens so, that I'm writing one that would be happy to have around 40G of virtual memory (while 2G of RAM is sufficient for this application for normal work). So, going back to the question 32 or 64 bit. Amount of RAM is not that important. First because even in 32-bit mode kernel can utilize more than 4G. Second, if we take regular desktop computer, all running programs fairly easy fit into 1G of RAM. At least on my desktop with 512M half of memory is still free :) Even if they don't fit, this won't stop your system from running. Again, if you know that one of the applications you use would benefit from huge amount of RAM, then RAM will become "important". -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
