September 23, 2008 · General · Email This Post
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Currently It seems that the current 32 bit editions of Ubuntu can only take advantage of 3GB (sometimes a little more) of physical memory. Desktops and gaming rigs using 6 and 8 GB of RAM are ubiquitous now.I am having a ubuntu desktop with 5GB RAM and i want to use all the available memory for gaming.



Procedure to follow

You need to install the following packages and restart your PC

sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-server

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-server

sudo apt-get install linux-image-server linux-server

That’s it after rebooting you should be able to see all the memory available in your system.

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36 Comments to “How to Use more than 3GB RAM on 32-bit Ubuntu”

  1. Anonymous says:

    It’s time for people to just invest in a 64-bit system and use a 64-bit Linux.

    x86_64 is here. i686 is on the way out. Get with the times, people.

    PAE is no longer the best option.

  2. Anonymous says:

    Yes however the 64 bit versions that i have used are still a bit unstable. For instance, RDP doesn’t always connect, Firefox randomly closes, etc. Perhaps it is my older hw, but nonetheless it still isn’t all that stable.

  3. Anonymous says:

    “Yes however the 64 bit versions that i have used are still a bit unstable. For instance, RDP doesn’t always connect, Firefox randomly closes, etc. Perhaps it is my older hw, but nonetheless it still isn’t all that stable.”

    Its your hardware, not Linux. Myself, all my friends, everyone else I know who runs 64-bit says that it runs better than 32-bit, and nothing crashes.

    So the instability has nothing oto do with your Linux’s support for 64-bit support, since it has EXCELLENT 64-support.

    Remember, just because YOU Have a problem doesn’t mean the rest of the universe does or means that suddenly 64-bit support in Linux is lackluster. It helps especially to use dmesg and go on Google and not assume it’s because its 64-bit that its failing.

    Damn n00b.

  4. B says:

    Thanks for this tip!

    Are there any performance implications for reading/writing memory -- relative to using the 64-bit OS?

    Is there much overhead for “faking” 64-bit memory addresses on a 32-bit OS?

  5. Blahblubla says:

    “Remember, just because YOU Have a problem doesn’t mean the rest of the universe does or means that suddenly 64-bit support in Linux is lackluster. It helps especially to use dmesg and go on Google and not assume it’s because its 64-bit that its failing.

    Damn n00b.” then you are not better than a noob.

    Remember, just because YOU DON’T Have a problem doesn’t mean the rest of the universe DOESN’T

  6. dj-toonz says:

    Excellent tip on getting 32 bit ubuntu to see more then 3.2gigs of ram (I’ve got 12 gigs of ram in my i7 machine) and now Jaunty sees all the lot (I just installed the server version first & then downloaded the ubuntu-desktop after), why I’m still using 32bit & not 64bit. Is because I’ve got a few d.a.w applications what are just 32bit (I know I could wrap them to work under 64bit) but then the Linux vst plugins don’t work as there 64bit :-( already tried at a friends before installing jaunty on to my machine. I’ve book marked Ubuntu geek for tips like this cheers

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