On 10/14/24 10:33, Stuart Henderson wrote: > On 2024-10-12, Christian Schulte <c...@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
