DDQOTD (Dumb Distro Question of the Day) Does Fedora 10 install as a 64 bit OS when it senses 64 bit hardware?

[Ted Roche]

Alex Hewitt wrote:
> I have a copy of Fedora 10 that came inside a Linux Format magazine. I 
> installed it on a new system with 8 gb of RAM and a quad core AMD CPU. 
> When I issue the free command I see all 8 gb of RAM. Does that mean that 
> the distro installed itself as a 64 bit version? If so, is there an easy 
> way to tell? uname -a gives:
>
> "Linux hostname.localdomain 2.6.27.5.117.fc10.i686.PAE #1 SMP Tue Nov 18 
> 12:08:10 EST 2008 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux"
>
> -Alex
>
>   
Hi, Alex:

There are few dumb questions. This isn't one of them.

That's a 32-bit version of Fedora, that uses PAE [1] something 
kinda-like LIMS memory, only done right. There is a 64-bit version of 
Fedora, but you'd need to download that one specifically, from:

http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all

 From what I hear (and Everyone please chime in if I'm out to lunch) is 
that the PAE version will let you access all the memory, but won't run 
64 bit applications. The 64-bit will run both 64-bit and 32-bit. 
Performance, except for some real edge cases, is pretty similar between 
the two.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

-- 
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com