Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Q5sys · Joined: 11 Dec 2008 Posts: 849

From the PAE discussion that's brewing...

mikeslr · Posted: Mon 25 Feb 2013, 10:40 Post subject: Thanks for running the tests

Thanks, Q5sys, for running the tests. I can appreciate how much time they took, having recently run compartive tests on pets vs. sfses vs. program folders.

About two years ago, when PAE kernels began to show up, I did a google search and reported pretty much the same thing based on a professional lab's tests under, albeit I think, Fedora. Since then, whenever the opportunity arose, I argued that Devs should be developing two species of Puppies: non-PAE for 32-Bit, PAE for 64-bit. Regretfully, I suspect I've been preaching heresy to True Believers: neither evidence nor reason matters.Or perhaps, as I've also said, Devs are likely to acquire modern, powerful, computers and create the best system for those. The thought that a non-PAE Pup may breath new life into hundreds of thousands of computers, otherwise slated for landfills, that may be of use in the 3rd World, or to most of the people now economically depressed in the 1st --in short, that Pups actually have a social value-- no longer appears to be important.

mikesLr

Q5sys · Joined: 11 Dec 2008 Posts: 849

James C · Joined: 26 Mar 2009 Posts: 4742 Location: Kentucky

Be interesting to see your results for the older P3 era hardware. When this pae fascination began I did quite a bit of testing on the older hardware......... the results were fairly obvious from mere observation. Even a 2-3% performance hit makes a difference when a user is starting with only 256-512 mb of ram.
Looking forward to the results.

darkcity · Joined: 23 May 2010 Posts: 2215 Location: near here

I've just noticed this thread regarding performance penalties using PAE - so I've noted that on the Wiki.

BTW, I don't know if this has already been mentioned? But scsijon noted a developer saying PAE supports a "No Execute" feature in addition to extending memory range-

blog link at bottom of the page http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PAE

James C · Joined: 26 Mar 2009 Posts: 4742 Location: Kentucky

A selection of cpu's that doesn't support PAE....

darkcity · Joined: 23 May 2010 Posts: 2215 Location: near here

01micko · Joined: 11 Oct 2008 Posts: 7019 Location: qld

Q5sys,

I am not going to express my personal opinion either way on PAE/nonPAE but because Puppy is generally perceived as capable of running on older hardware I always list the 4g version first,

Now, there is a slight flaw in your tests. The 4g and PAE versions are different kernel versions in 5.4 .

For more objective testing, I suggest to use Slacko 5.3.3 because both versions ship with k3.1.10. (with 4g/PAE appended to the name).

Cheers!

Q5sys · Joined: 11 Dec 2008 Posts: 849

01micko · Joined: 11 Oct 2008 Posts: 7019 Location: qld

Well if you can apply the logic "older hardware, older kernel" .. then that's my "good reason" Laughing

Which isn't necessarily true! As we all know kernel versions can vary considerably performance wise on different hardware and sometimes a newer version actually performs better than an older version on older HW, which in actual fact *should* (but isn't always) be the case.

Make sense?

Well since you are comparing 5.4 versions then I guess the real world test are relevant to 5.4 and the info is useful to anyone using or contemplating using 5.4. I may even link this thread on my 5.4.1 website, when published, so users can take a look if they want and make an informed choice.

mikeslr

Hi Q5sys,

I posted SFS files vs program folders: test results are in!
Here's the link http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=84457.

mikesLr