Forcepae for future releases?

[fu-sen]

forcepae does not pass to all CPU,
non-PAE version will be the best for the moment.

[chrispop99]

forcepae does not pass to all CPU,

It allows just one disk to complete an install on both pae and non-pae machines. (Obviously it can't make a non-pae CPU support pae.) I've just installed Mint 17 Xfce RC to a P3 laptop successfully.

non-PAE version will be the best for the moment.

For the moment, yes. For future releases this is something that really should be considered.

There are two different things that the Mint 17 (and presumably Ubuntu) release does.

If the forcepae command is issued and a non-pae CPU is detected, the kernel is modified to be the same as the non-pae release one.

If a forcepae command is issued and the CPU is an early Pentium M (which supports pae, but hides the fact), then a pae install will be done, and the result will be as if the CPU fully supported pae.

There are significant benefits in doing this, both to the devs and the end-user.

For the devs, it will be much easier to maintain one release.

For the rest, if you have multiple machines that are both pae and non-pae, you only need download and burn one CD. Also, it is less confusing for a novice; 'which download do I choose' versus 'Oh, that's easy, there's only one to download'.

If this could be implemented, perhaps there could be a "Force PAE" option added to the F4 key on the boot menu? If that was done, and a couple of lines added to the Quickstart guide, it would make MX even better.

Chris

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

[fu-sen]

forcepae does not pass to all CPU,

It allows just one disk to complete an install on both pae and non-pae machines. (Obviously it can't make a non-pae CPU support pae.) I've just installed Mint 17 Xfce RC to a P3 laptop successfully.

No, Mint 17 confirms that it does not boot with all non-PAE PCs.
hrispop99's PC does not fit all PCs.
I know that there is the model which does not work and specify this,
and Mint forum has the report.

[chrispop99]

No, Mint 17 confirms that it does not boot with all non-PAE PCs.

Can you provide a link to that information please?

Chrispop99's PC does not fit all PCs.
I know that there is the model which does not work and specify this.

I have rather a lot of hardware to test on

I test-installed Mint 17 on a laptop with a Pentium M CPU, and also on a laptop with a Pentium 3 CPU. They both worked properly; these two CPU types would cover a huge number of laptops that are still kicking around.

Chris

[chrispop99]

No, Mint 17 confirms that it does not boot with all non-PAE PCs.

That's not what the release notes say:

To boot Linux Mint 17 on non-PAE CPUs, please append "forcepae" to your boot arguments. At the boot menu of the live DVD/USB, press Tab to edit the boot arguments and add "forcepae" at the end of the line.

No mention of 'This might not work for all situations'.

Chris

[Stevo]

It really sounds like this would be worthy of suggesting to the Debian kernel maintainers, though they must be aware of it. Maybe they think it could break something else.