On 15 May 2013 19:52, Yorvyk <yorvik.ubu...@googlemail.com> wrote: > On 15/05/13 10:41, Liam Proven wrote: >> >> However, if the Via C3 has other issues as well as PAE support, this >> may not be enough. >> > I believe the C3 doesn't have a full i686 instruction set and requires a > i589, or lower, kernel. The geode SOC is similar in this respect.
[Nod] I thought it might be - that's what I meant when I said "has other issues as well". I don't think Ubuntu supports raw i386/i486 any more - I'm not 100% sure. Debian does, though. I am running Debian with an i386 kernel on the same Thinkpad to which I referred. However, note that raw i386 support is being removed from the recent builds of the Linux kernel so soon this will not be an option. http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/15/linux-to-drop-i386-support-in-the-3-8-kernel/ I think 486 optimisation will still work, though. (The low-level core of the 80486 is quite different from the 80386 although the instruction set is identical, barring 1 extra opcode. The 486 is a pipelined, scalar core. I believe that GCC understands this and can optimise for it. Whether the kernel will retain 486 support, I don't know.) > As I understand it he Pentium M does have PAE but no PAE flag. The > fake-pae patches /proc/cpu so as as to show this flag as it were. I don't think this is the case, but I am not certain. PAE was introduced in the Pentium Pro in the mid-1990s and is supported in almost every CPU since /except/ the Pentium-M and some low-end Celerons. I have seen Ubuntu 12.10 refuse to boot on some Celeron machines with the error that PAE is missing. I think, technically speaking, that the CPU feature is *disabled* rather than *missing* but it hardly matters. It's not there and kernels that require it won't boot except with fake-PAE. This makes installing a fresh copy tricky, although it can be done: you need to unpack the ISO onto a USB stick, add an extra kernel (e.g. the 12.04 non-PAE version) and use the replacement kernel. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/