I have a machine with the following characteristics:
Board: Asus NCCH-DL (whit Hyper-Threading activated)
Processor: 2x Intel Xeon 3.2Ghz 2Mb cache (SL7ZE)
Memory: 4Gb DDR
Graphics Card: Geforce 7300
And the other components.
I did the installation and everything went well, but I have a doubt, with the machine that i have, what is the ideal kernel: (kernel-default or kernel-pae)???
Thanks
The kernel PAE stands for Physical Adress Extension. You need this kernel only if you have more than 4 gb physical memory.
So you need the kernel default. And I would advise you to install also the kernel development packages (sources etc…) and the base development packages. You will need them for to compile & install the Nvidia driver for the graphics card. (but maybe you know that already?)
Although, as far as I can determine, the PAE version does no harm even if you don’t have 4gb of RAM. So I don’t know why someone wouldn’t use it.
I love how you prefaced that with ‘as far as I can determine…’.
That’s it precisely…you don’t know what you don’t know.
Which is the argument for staying with ‘default’ (unless there is some
logic that pae might benefit you, like having 4GB or more of RAM).
I’ve got just 1GB, so when the ‘bug’ in ndivia installer shoved ‘pae’
down my throat, I pushed back.
I’m a strict follower of the ‘KISS’ philosophy’:
KISS - Wiktionary
which recommends that there is safety-in-numbers, which has
always proved true in the software world. Ditto for using 32-bit
OS vs 64-bit OS, after I tried both back when I first got my AMD
machine, and the benchmarking of each proved 64-bit about
10% slower (which may also be due to having only 1GB and/or
to not having dual-core…I’ve got the AMD Sempron-3100).
On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 15:56 +0000, cookdav wrote:
> hieronymous;1851571 Wrote:
> > Although, as far as I can determine, the PAE version does no harm even
> > if you don’t have 4gb of RAM. So I don’t know why someone wouldn’t use
> > it.
>
> I love how you prefaced that with ‘as far as I can determine…’.
> That’s it precisely…you don’t know what you don’t know.
Penalty is roughly 1-3% for memory access. Most say you cannot
tell.
Actually, there is/was a small memory kernel for machines with 1GB
or less that is even more efficient… but being efficient doesn’t
mean noticeable.
>
> Which is the argument for staying with ‘default’ (unless there is some
> logic that pae might benefit you, like having 4GB or more of RAM).
Agreed.
>
> I’ve got just 1GB, so when the ‘bug’ in ndivia installer shoved ‘pae’
> down my throat, I pushed back.
You might have been able to benefit from the small kernel which
used to be the default… there was default (1GB), 4GB and 64GB
at one time.
>
> I’m a strict follower of the ‘KISS’ philosophy’:
> ‘KISS - Wiktionary’ (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/KISS)
> which recommends that there is safety-in-numbers, which has
> always proved true in the software world. Ditto for using 32-bit
> OS vs 64-bit OS, after I tried both back when I first got my AMD
> machine, and the benchmarking of each proved 64-bit about
> 10% slower (which may also be due to having only 1GB and/or
> to not having dual-core…I’ve got the AMD Sempron-3100).
>
>
On your 1G machine I can see 64bit putting some strain. 1G used
to be huge… but nowadays it isn’t and 64bit, whether we like
it or not, DOES use more memory.
In your case, your platform doesn’t need 64bits… and there
are a few painful areas in 64bit land today usually fixable by
installing 32bit versions of certain packages (e.g. firefox).
There’s no sense in installing Default kernel unless your CPU doesn’t support PAE - it has no negative sides to it. It’s not slower in a way that you would notice anyway.
It does, however, come with the added benefit that if you, in the future, decide to add over 3.25-3.5GB to your system (as you won’t be able to use all 4 unless you have a server chipset due to PCI memory mapping), you do not need to reinstall 64 bit until you are ready and can enjoy the benefits of all your memory.
KISS philosophy would dictate that you should only use one kernel - in this case the PAE since it supports both camps.
Ah, but I didn’t install the default kernel. The (according now to you folks: ‘stupid’)
openSUSE installer installed it. It had the chance to examine my system and
it chose to install ‘default’ rather than ‘pae’. So, maybe I should file a bug-report!
I remain unconvinced. Hmm…now that I think of it, maybe instead of quoting
‘KISS’, I should have quoted the "OALAEHO’ philosophy:
“Opinions are like assh*les, everybody has one”
Our “opinions” are based on fact - yours isn’t.
Relevant picture:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f4/Tuvok.jpg/220px-Tuvok.jpg