Recommendations...

[Susan Cragin]

>>I was thinking of Ubuntu 10.04.  My question is should I do 32 or 64
>>bit?  If I go 32-bit I will not be able to use all the ram, and if I go
>>64-bit I may not have all the drivers.
>As to "not using all of your memory" with a 32-bit OS, I think you have
>a misconception of how virtual vs real memory works.
>
>It is true that a 32-bit machine can only access 4GB, and sometimes even
>less than that (depending on how the application address space is
>organized) in one *virtual* address space, but this does not necessarily
>stop the kernel from "using all of RAM".  It is just that various parts
>of multiple virtual address spaces get mapped into the physical memory
>of the machine.  It was this concept that allowed the old PDP-11s, which
>had only a 64K memory address space (128K with separate "instruction"
>and "data" address spaces) utilize all of the physical memory on
>machines that had multiple megabytes of RAM.
>
>So even a "32-bit" OS could fully utilize the real memory of a 64-bit
>CPU machine having multiple gigabytes of RAM if its memory management
>software allows....it is just that the applications are limited to a
>32-bit space at one time.
>
>md

And doesn't the pae kernel address these issues? I'd grab that, whatever you're using. 
Susan