Mageia forum

New for me laptop. This is the first one with I believe 4096mb RAM. I have heard of PAE kernel but request recommendations.

Install is MGA3 KDE installed via Live DVD
Laptop is Dell N5010. BIOS shows 4096 mb RAM

uname -a shows:
Linux inspiron-n5010 3.8.13-desktop586-1.mga3 #1 SMP Tue May 14 19:06:27 UTC 2013 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

free -m shows:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2965 922 2042 0 29 553
-/+ buffers/cache: 339 2626
Swap: 3991 0 3991

MCC hdwr also shows about 3gb RAM.

1. Is this installation recognizing all the memory but only reporting 3 gb?
2, There seem to be about 8-10 kernels in repos that are capable but they all indicate " up to 4gb" Don't see anything for 4gb and above or do I even need it?
Recommendations?

Thanks

If you want to run a 32 bit version of Mageia, then to use the full 4GB of RAM you need kernel-server. However, if this is a new laptop, I would expect that you could install a 64 bit version of Mageia. All the 64 bit kernels will use the entire 4GB of RAM.

Jim

A quick look at the N5010 specification indicates it uses the Intel integrated graphics processor with shared memory. This will be using some of your RAM, so even with a PAE or 64-bit kernel you won't get the full 4GB. In a 64-bit system, programs will use more memory (because all memory addresses will be stored as 64-bits instead of 32-bits), and with only 4GB of physical RAM, you are likely to lose more than you gain. PAE makes RAM accesses slower, so is generally not recommended unless you have no other way to get a program to run.

I think right where I am at will be fine.

Thanks for the tips.

I have the same question about a different set of hardware. I just bought a Packard Bell EasyNote TE (2.2 GHz Intel B960 processor, 8 GB RAM), which came with Windows 8 installed. I want to install Mageia on it. I have the installation DVD for the 32-bit version of Mageia 3, but I wonder if it might be worthwhile to download and install the 64-bit version.

The most resource-intensive things that I do on my laptop are to run a virtual Windows machine using VirtualBox (on those occasions where I have to use a Windows-only program for work), to edit and encode audio using Audacity, and to edit photos using Digikam. Otherwise, I'm just a standard desktop/internet/office user. The programs that I use the most are Kontact, Firefox with Zotero plug-in and Flash, KMyMoney, LibreOffice, Amarok, Denemo, and the aforementioned VirtualBox, Audacity, and Digikam.

How mature and stable is the 64-bit version? Will everything run well for me, especially the applications mentioned above? What are the advantages, if any, over the 32-bit version? Thank you!

EDIT: Sorry, I had forgotten Audacity.

Gelsenbury wrote:How mature and stable is the 64-bit version? Will everything run well for me, especially the applications mentioned above? What are the advantages, if any, over the 32-bit version? Thank you!

Maturity and stability are the same as for the 32bit version.
In general, for all machines with more than 4GB of RAM, you should use the 64bit version, otherwise you can't use more than 4GB of RAM.
(except for a 32bit PAE kernel, but that's an ugly and slow workaround ...)

Thank you for the reply. I will try the 64-bit version. Unfortunately I can't get the Live DVD to work at the moment. Booting from the DVD leaves me with just the bottom fifth of the welcome screen loaded, and choosing the installation option leaves me with a blank screen. The DVD and HDD stop working, and nothing happens. Is the full installation DVD a better bet?

You could try to boot with xdriver=vesa or xdriver=intel boot option with the Live DVD first.

xdriver=vesa did the trick! That would have been impossible to figure out by myself.

I have installed Mageia 3 from the Live DVD. So far, so good!

It was in the previous Erratas: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_2_Err ... rd_drivers