Re: Memory upgrade

On 10/14/24 10:33, Stuart Henderson wrote:
> On 2024-10-12, Christian Schulte <cs@schulte.it> wrote:
>> Take i386. Compile it with something -march=i686 or pentiumpro by
>> default. That's it. Add support for the various PAE MMU options.
>
> "That's it". "Add support for". Do you really think it's a thing simple
> enough to sum up in a few words?

That "add support for the various PAE MMU options" is not just a few
words, of course. Waste of time? Maybe. If 4GB is not enough upgrade the
hardware and run amd64.

>
> Last time steps in this direction were attempted, i386 was subtly broken
> on AMD CPUs for months.
>
>> My current daily is a Lenovo x240 with 8GB of RAM running amd64
>> and this thing is swapping like mad. Throw a 32 bit OS at it supporting
>> those 8GB of RAM and go for it. Why would anyone throw away such a
>> machine, just because a 64 bit OS hits its boundaries, when a 32 bit OS
>> would not?
>
> And then ASLR would be seriously limited, because of the low amount of
> address space per process. And it's hard to predict how usable it would
> actually be, especially on an OS that uses PIE widely, due to the lower
> number of registers.
>

Running i386 on a CPU supporting amd64 makes no sense, I admit. Last
time running i386 is more than a decade ago. Step one for me currently is:

1. Am I the only one experiencing this 8GB of RAM is not enough for an
amd64 laptop just because Firefox with a few open tabs and Thunderbird
running in parallel will make it swap? The answer seems to be yes. Quite
confused right now. I upgraded RAM from 4GB to

spdmem0 at iic0 addr 0x50: 8GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800 SO-DIMM

two weeks ago. That's why the subject caught my attention. Still swaps
but cannot add more than 8GB to that machine. What now? Have some fun
with KiCAD? No - buy a new laptop. How on earth can 8GB physical RAM not
be enough for browsing the web and doing email? I must be doing
something seriously wrong.

--
Christian