anikin wrote:Geoffrey, thank you for clarifying this. However, what gets me thinking is this: suppose a person has a system with a PAE supported processor (Intel atom 270 and only 2GB of RAM - eeepc). Which one will be his best bet? PAE - there's not and never will be that much of RAM on this machine. Non-PAE?
both of these would suit the PC fine. PAE and non-PAE perform about equal in all situations with RAM less than 3.5GB.
We MUST remember that all PAE does is to take advantage of a hardware feature for accessing RAM done for our benefit in 32bit processing.
Because the work is done in hardware it has little impact one way or the other for damping/improving RAM access.
PAE functionality just makes Linux aware for using that hardware....no matter how much RAM is physically on your PC.
One reason the Carolina authors selected PAE (I think) is because the hardware feature has been put in MOST every 32bit (and included in 64bit) CPUs since its introduction by Intel and AMD in 1995. It has a 17 year history where there is no known negative impact on OS operations.
The users should not look for any bias, one way or the other, as most PCs and PC users today are using 512MB-1GB or larger PCs. Thus, assuming one's PC is among the many, and it runs PAE, Carolina (and all 32bit PUPs presenting PAE) will work on EVERY Pentium forward machine no matter how much RAM it has....1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, etc to 64GB. In most cases, I have seen that the ISO is less than 10MB bigger, but the running RAM footprint is about the same.
What makes Puppy unique and why this version is necessary is how 32bit Puppy Linux using the remaining RAM after it boots. This is why DVD/CD oeprations match/exceed installed HDD operations: Puppy maps the remaining RAM, after initial boot, into a useable filesystem. Thats a hardware hard-drive in RAM usable for system and user operations.
This is one the most clever ways of taking advantage of all RAM that is not used to run the system. Its just downright clever! And, one can easily see that this has benefit no matter how much RAM one would have...the more RAM, obviously, the bigger the RAM drive that would be available. To me, this is a poor-man's SSD.
Hope that helps