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I'm mad about Non-PAE!!!
Posted: Tue 21 May 2013, 18:08
by donkeymilk
How can you not tell people this is non pae?
Puppy Distros are meant for old computers.
that is the point of them.
I'm fed up downloading megabytes of stuff only to find out it is useless on a Dell D505 Pentium M.
Read before you download
Posted: Tue 21 May 2013, 18:39
by oligin10
Just a suggestion. There are plenty of versions of Puppy. Read before you take your time to download. Some are PAE, some aren't. Thanks, Rob
Posted: Tue 21 May 2013, 20:19
by Flash
Hmm, I was unaware that the whole point of Puppy was to keep old computers going. Thanks for setting me straight. What should I use in new computers?
Posted: Tue 21 May 2013, 22:06
by rjbrewer
Flash wrote: What should I use in new computers?
Your credit card.
Posted: Wed 22 May 2013, 00:13
by p310don
Most Puppies ARE non-PAE, and that is why it works so well on most old computers.
Some of the newest Puppies have both PAE and non-PAE builds, and it is usually pretty clearly labelled as such.
What did you download?
What are you looking for? For an older machine like that, have a look at Wary or Classic Pup.
Classic:
http://www.smokey01.com/ttuuxxx/2.14X/i ... -top10.iso
Wary:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/wary-5.5/wary-5.5.iso
Hope that helps
Paul
Posted: Wed 22 May 2013, 00:49
by R-S-H
Posted: Wed 22 May 2013, 01:19
by oldyeller
Posted: Wed 22 May 2013, 05:16
by gcmartin
The Puppy Development community works very hard to generate General Purpose 32bit distros for our use.
It appears you may have just joined the forum. So, you "may" be new here.
For about the last 3 years many/most Puppy developers have been sharing the "target" PC they expect for the distros they build for community consumption. Since there is no "standard format" of announcing this, sometimes, we have to dig a little to get that understanding.
Last year, this community made major efforts in transistioning distros to work in 2 major areas for General Purpose 32bit Puppy systems:
- Most, now, build a 32bit version that seems to work very well on PCs from 512MB to 4GB. This is labeled sometimes as "4G" and other times as non-PAE.
- And many distro builders also make a 32bit version which will work on any PC since 1995 which comes with the Intel PAE spec.
The older distros too, as couple members have already shared in this thread, do "work" on the older hardware...still.
In an effort to help you I see that your laptop has one of these CPU:
- Intel® Pentium M® Processors up to 735 (1.70 Ghz, 2MB L2 cache);
- Intel® Pentium M® Processors up to 1.60 Ghz (1MB L2 cache);
- Intel® Celeron M® Processors up to 340 (1.50 Ghz, 512KB L2 cache)
There is no conspiracy active in this community nor is there attempts to purposely hide information for any greater purpose. In fact, this, I believe, is the reason the distro developers began sharing the targeted platforms that they expect their builds will run comfortably on. I think many test this to insure accuracy of their recommendations. Thus they try to help people, like us, to understand what the distro is intended for.
The PAE development is designed, specifically, to extend the system configurations that PUPs can run on....not to limit Puppy Linux. Over 99% of the CPUs built by AMD and Intel have PAE. Thats a lot of millions of PCs since 1995.
The community can help you, should you want its help. So I will take a step to ask a couple of key questions such that members here can share good information to help
Question that we need answers to better help you
- Which of the above processors do you have on the D505?
- How much RAM do you have on the D505?
- What Operating System were you running BEFORE you signed into the forum on the D505?
If you are running ANY Linux,
open a terminal, type the following, and
post the results, along with the above questions to us here in the forum.
Code: Select all
# uname -a
# grep flags /proc/cpuinfo
Should you want help, please share the answers to all the questions and also post the results of the above commands.
You can trust that members, here, will assist with a better understanding from you.
Here to help
Posted: Wed 22 May 2013, 13:43
by rjbrewer
Been using Wary on my Pentium M machine for a long time.
Trying the just released Precise 5.6.
Just as good; if not better.
Posted: Wed 22 May 2013, 14:07
by ally
regarding the new precise, I have it installed on a lenovo t500 and it seems much faster then earlier versions
Posted: Wed 22 May 2013, 15:12
by Moose On The Loose
gcmartin wrote:
There is no conspiracy active in this community nor is there attempts to purposely hide information for any greater purpose.
Perhaps we should start one. Only folks who know to read this forum can be let in on our secret plan to take over the world by providing software designed to run very well and be easy to use on different machines and thus force those who try to sell competing software out of business.
I did think of an idea that is slightly above my skill level to make life easier for folks with hardware we did not expect to be run on.
When puppy comes up the first time, it tries to go straight into running with the hardware it thinks is there. It may be worth it to add a text mode dialog just before this that says something like this:
We have looked at this machine and think we know what hardware is installed. Based on what we see, we are about to start using your video card etc.
Some brands of computers have hardware that looks like one thing but in fact is something else. If the screen goes black and stays that way for several minutes, it is safe to just reset the computer and try again. Your hard drive is not touched.
Is this a case of you trying again?
(NO) (YES)
If the answer yes is given each wizard can be run with perhaps an extra line of text suggesting they may try a different setting.
Posted: Wed 22 May 2013, 16:49
by musher0
I agree with "Moose on the Loose".
We should all conspire to make the (computer) world more transparent.
Like in compiz-fusion or something.
(Now where in h... did flash put that tongue-in-cheek icon...)
THANKS
Posted: Wed 22 May 2013, 23:35
by donkeymilk
Thanks for those who posted the genuinely helpful answers.
Sorry ,it was 3 in the morning (Non compos mentis)!
Thanks again for the helpful pointers.
Shouldn't we ask the "Linux Community" to state pae or non pae on all releases?
I'm using Fakepae with one my of Ubuntu spinoffs and it seems to work ok.
Sadly it's not recognized at the bios level when first booting other distros i like to check out.
Re: THANKS
Posted: Mon 03 Jun 2013, 20:56
by AwesomesaurusRex
donkeymilk wrote:Shouldn't we ask the "Linux Community" to state pae or non pae on all releases?
I think that makes perfect sense.
personally i think pae is dumb. if you have 4gb or more you are probably running a 64bit cpu so you should use a 64bit os.
Posted: Tue 04 Jun 2013, 22:35
by gcmartin
The laptop mentioned by @Donkeymilk is only 32bit.
PAE does NOT degrade Puppy LInux behavior should he choose to use it. Its not a question of PAE or non-PAE on the 99% of all 32bit capable PCs since 1995. There really are a very few PCs-laptops that are NOT PAE capable NO MATTER HOW MUCH RAM you have. PAE Is not and never was a 4GB or greater technology. Its a memory-addressing technology BUILT-IN the hardware (CPU) of the PC. Thus, the pre-1995 technology (non-PAE) works and the post-1995 hardware technology (known as PAE) works TOO with NO drawbacks to either of the 2,
So, if you have a PAE capable PC/laptop, its your choice when a developer offers you a choice.
The primary reason developers offer PAE capability is that they KNOW that a PAE distro will work NO MATTER HOW MUCH RAM you have. from 384MB (some distros) to as much as you can get the BIOS to use. And, Puppy is designed to incorporate all of that memory into its RAM file system for productive user use. For non-PAE distros, the same use exist, but, the amount of RAM is limited. Again, both of these work will work on a PAE capable PC, without issue or drawbacks.
This is the technology. Its not a feeling.
Either, will probably work on your laptop. @Donkeymilk, use your discretion. On some distros, if you do NOT have a PAE laptop/PC, you will get a message indicating this when you try to boot. Otherwise, it will "just boot to desktop".
This is offer to help in understanding. Its, simply, for informational purposes.
Posted: Wed 05 Jun 2013, 10:04
by anikin
Here's what wikipedia has to say on PAE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
Wikipedia wrote:The Linux kernel includes full PAE mode support starting with version 2.3.23,[17] enabling access of up to 64 GB of memory on 32-bit machines. A PAE-enabled Linux kernel requires that the CPU also support PAE. The Linux kernel supports PAE as a build option and major distributions provide a PAE kernel either as the default or as an option. As of 2009,[18] some common Linux distributions have started to use a PAE-enabled kernel as the distribution-specific default.[18] As of 2012, common Linux distributions have stopped distributing non-PAE kernels, thus making PAE hardware mandatory - examples being Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS from version 6.0, Ubuntu (and derivatives like Linux Mint) from 12.10.[19] Fedora and Debian still distribute both PAE and non-PAE kernels.
edit
How to check if your cpu supports PAE? It can be done in a glorious way via this command:
Code: Select all
grep --color=always -i PAE /proc/cpuinfo
Posted: Wed 05 Jun 2013, 15:04
by rjbrewer
anikin wrote:
How to check if your cpu supports PAE? It can be done in a glorious way via this command:
Code: Select all
grep --color=always -i PAE /proc/cpuinfo
Nothing "glorious" about it!
The command does nothing on a non-PAE machine.
Doesn't mention PAE on others.
Posted: Wed 05 Jun 2013, 15:55
by anikin
No problem on PAE machines here, see image below.
If glory can't be observed on a non pae cpu ... isn't that a limitation of the cpu? No PAE, no glory. Although, frankly, I haven't bothered to test the command on a non-pae cpu.
Posted: Wed 06 Nov 2013, 06:30
by g2k
gcmartin wrote:So, if you have a PAE capable PC/laptop, its your choice when a developer offers you a choice.
The primary reason developers offer PAE capability is that they KNOW that a PAE distro will work NO MATTER HOW MUCH RAM you have. from 384MB (some distros) to as much as you can get the BIOS to use. And, Puppy is designed to incorporate all of that memory into its RAM file system for productive user use. For non-PAE distros, the same use exist, but, the amount of RAM is limited. Again, both of these work will work on a PAE capable PC, without issue or drawbacks.
While the above quoted statement(s) are true, it needs to be pointed out (for those who may not know): that NO distro with a PAE enabled kernel will work or install on ANY computer that has a NON pae processor.
There is a "trick" called [fake PAE], but it's a hack to FORCE something that wasn't designed to work to "usually" work.
The decision by "whomever" to discontinue supporting non pae processors was poorly thought out, at best.
Whoever "they"are should have kept the status quo and simply supplied the PAE enabled kernel during the install updates process. This would have GUARANTEED compatibility (in this area), while still enabling a given kernel to be more precisely matched to a given hardware setup.
Instead "they" decided that they would use kernels that are already PAE enabled by default. You have every right to be upset about this, it was a dumb move, plain and simple. I too am approaching the $25.00 mark in cd's/dvd's that are now beautiful coasters.