Nowadays, many machines are running with 2-4 gigabytes of RAM, and their owners are discovering a problem: When they run 32-bit GNU/Linux distributions, their extra RAM is not being used. Fortunately, correcting the problem is only a matter of installing or building a kernel with a few specific parameters enabled or disabled.
The problem exists because 32-bit Linux kernels are designed to access only 1GB of RAM by default. The workaround for this limitation is vaguely reminiscent of the virtual memory solution once used by DOS, with a high memory area of virtual memory being constantly mapped to physical addresses. This high memory can be enabled for up to 4GB by one kernel parameter, or up to 64GB on a Pentium Pro or higher processor with another parameter. However, since these parameters have not been needed on most machines until recently, the standard kernels in many distributions have not enabled them.
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