[geeks] Windows XP 64bit Licensing?

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

nate at portents.com wrote:
>> Is arguing with phantoms a hobby?  :)
> 
> No, but being overly-thorough is. :)
> 
> Original question: "Due to the lack of Linux support for my graphics card,
> and my desire to use more than 3gb of ram it seems that Windows XP x64 may
> be my only option..."
> 
> 32-bit Linux is not necessarily "no problem" because it most likely will
> not solve his 3GB RAM issue (as that's not an OS issue, but an
> architecture one), and while 64-bit Linux will allow him to use all this

[ snip ]

I agree, it's just that I wasn't talking about any of that, and you argued as if 
I had, and then accused me of glossing over the issues.

All I wanted to do was note that you could address 4GB in 32-bit Linux.

> My point was he needs to do a lot more research before investing in any
> operating system, and I was making the point of illustrating all the
> potential issues (there are many) to running any 64-bit OS on an x86
> architecture.  I wasn't arguing so much as educating.  If I sounded like I
> was arguing, it's probably because I'm rather sick of having to deal with
> all this mess professionally and it makes me sad/frustrated to write about
> it.

Not a problem, it's messy, but it's better than it was.  I still remember bounce 
buffers on memory heavy ISA bus machines.

I just wanted to make sure no one thought 32-bit Linux, Solaris, *BSD, etc was 
unable to do 4GB addressing on x86.

There's really not much you can do about holes, and with 1GB video cards 
shipping the 32-bit address space just doesn't look as big as it used to.

Of course, that doesn't excuse so many BIOS and motherboards being unable to
relocate expansion card address ranges.

Didn't we solve that problem a long time ago?

Aside: I upgraded my machine from 2GB to 3GB.

My hardware doesn't have relocation issues, but my wallet does have hard limits.

I was going to do 4GB, but decided against it because of cost, and because my 
video card would have wasted 256MB of that, plus 20-40MB of misc mappings.

Maybe I'll regret it, because 3.5GB would be fun to play with, but 3GB will
do what I need and this machine is not likely to be upgraded ever again.

It will eventually become a server and I'll have some other desktop in its place.

By that time, Firefox will be leaking 2.5GB of RAM, Open Office will require 4GB 
just to start, and I'll be running multiple copies of vi on a 40 inch monitor...

	:-)


-- 
shannon           | An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto
                   | one blade of grass and not fall off the face of the earth.