highmem on ubuntu 8.04

[sourceninja]

So my new laptop from work (dell D830) has 4 gigs of ram (mostly for running virtual machines).

I was wondering if I should run the x86_64 version of ubuntu or the 32bit. The liveCD's show the 32bit does not have highmem enabled, so it only sees 3.5 gig. But the x86_64 see's all 4 gig. Is it worth it to use the 64bit, or to just recompile the 32bit kernel with highmem support?

 

[sourceninja]

Looks like my life will be easier with 32 bit anyways, I did a quick amd64 setup and it looks like a lot of the stuff I need is just too flaky on amd64 (like java browser plugins, flash, etc). Now I just need to find the 'ubuntu' way of recompiling the kernel.

 

[sourceninja]

well, looking at it, it actually does have highmem set to 4 gig. Which is probably where it needs to be. I guess nevermind

 

[Nothinman]

No, you need HIGHMEM64G to get PAE enabled. I don't know about Ubuntu but Debian packages 64-bit kernels in their i386 distribution so you can run a full 32-bit userland with a 64-bit kernel by just installing the -amd64 flavor of the kernel.

 

[sourceninja]

I'll check thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure ubuntu 'supports' 64bit kernels in 32bit userland. But if they don't I guess I can always roll my own.