Sounds interesting, well worth looking into.
On the PAE business: It is a kludge, exploiting an aspect in the x86
memory architecture. And like all kludges, it is a poor substitute for
bravery! It will work for a bit, but is bad because it will encourage
a whole range of software development that depends on the kludge,
which mess will need untangling when true 64-bit or different machine
architectures come along.
When Windows was transitioning from 16-bit to 32-bit there was a
lot of time and effort expended in building software using so-called
"far pointers" (to try and use the extra physical memory available on
the machine, even though the OS being 16-bit could only address up to
64kB of RAM).
The problem with these kludges is they ultimately sap energy that
would otherwise be more creatively used. They are a distraction. We
need to do 64-bit already! But I understand that while we wait, there
are many existing applications that need to be able to use this extra
RAM...
P.
On Jun 26, 2008, at 07:31, Mark Tinka wrote:
So I had the fever recently, and while recovering, decided
to spend some time getting into openSuSE-11.0.
Off-the-bat, the install is great! I can't recall what life
was like back in '99 when ksemat handed me my first SuSE
Linux Professional CD set (well, not mine really, but you
get the picture).
They have shortened the install process much; the KDE
installation is some kind of compressed image - I didn't
get into the details. The reduced install time is very
welcome, especially on slower machines.
The kernel now has PAE (Physical Address Extension) support.
You may recall Paul Bagyenda's address expansion wish-list
earlier. Basically, the kernel can support up to 64GB of
RAM on a 32-bit system by increasing the address size to 36
bits, while retaining compatibility with 32-bit
applications.
Now, I'm not a programmer, and don't know my $'s from my #'s
or couldn't write code to save my life... so whether this
is all bull or not, I can't really say - as long as my 2GB
can be addressed, it's all good :-).
Avoid KDE-4, it looks pretty but it doesn't work - in short.
I work heavily under Linux, and KDE-4 just isn't there. A
lot of stuff is broken, and it doesn't play nice with my
VMware Fusion (resolution and all that). However, rumour
has it KDE-4.1 is far better, and most folk plan to upgrade
once it goes stable. Personally, I'll stick with KDE-3.5.9;
besides, openSuSE do warn you that's it not stable, before
you install.
A few annoying bugs still exist under KMail in KDE-3.5.9, so
the old workarounds still apply (although they seemed to be
clear in KDE-4).
The system boots faster, integrates better with VMware
(under KDE-3.5.9) and seems solid.
Another happy camper.
Cheers,
Mark.
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