New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

fiod · 2009-02-06 15:10:23

Hi,

I recently got a new Dell Studio laptop.

Typing "free" in the console gives me this:

[fio@delltux ~]$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       3074096     308020    2766076          0      11204     122132
-/+ buffers/cache:     174684    2899412
Swap:       514040          0     514040
[fio@delltux ~]$

Windows shows 4GB of RAM (and my reciept...), though Arch only shows 3G.

Any suggestions on this?

Thanks a lot,
fiod

Last edited by fiod (2009-02-06 15:11:06)

skottish · 2009-02-06 15:27:05

This has been covered here many times. Just search the forums for 3G.

Odd-rationale · 2009-02-06 16:20:31

Might be a little offtopic, but how do you like your new Studio? I am considering purchasing the Studio 15 laptop, and install Arch over the default Ubuntu install. What about the touch sensitive multimedia keys? Is it possible to get them to work? And what about battery life? Thanks!

And also, if you don't mind describing your setup... desktop environment/window manager, etc. that would be great!

GogglesGuy · 2009-02-06 16:34:27

skottish wrote:

This has been covered here many times. Just search the forums for 3G.

I don't think the forum search allows you to search on keywords with only two letters.

skottish · 2009-02-06 16:39:46

GogglesGuy wrote:

skottish wrote:
This has been covered here many times. Just search the forums for 3G.
I don't think the forum search allows you to search on keywords with only two letters.

That's 3GB and not 3G.

***Bad forum mod. Bad, bad forum mod.***

kevin89 · 2009-02-06 17:02:10

Use the search function indeed. But to help you: you need to install the x64_64 image of Arch Linux or recompile the kernel with the 32bit image to support more then 3GB of ram.

Vintendo · 2009-02-06 17:04:53

Odd-rationale wrote:

Might be a little offtopic, but how do you like your new Studio? I am considering purchasing the Studio 15 laptop, and install Arch over the default Ubuntu install. What about the touch sensitive multimedia keys? Is it possible to get them to work? And what about battery life? Thanks!
And also, if you don't mind describing your setup... desktop environment/window manager, etc. that would be great!

I also have a dell studio 15, so I think i can also respond to this. I love my laptop, it's awesome, it completely works. I ordered it with an intel graphics chip, not on the site but you can order it via the phone and a 9 cell battery. The media keys all work except for the far left one, the media key. They're recognized by xev, and I mapped them with xbindkeys. The 9 cell battery is awesome as well, I get a solid 5 hours of battery time with wifi enabled. I run arch with Xmonad.

Odd-rationale · 2009-02-06 17:07:53

Vintendo wrote:

Odd-rationale wrote:
Might be a little offtopic, but how do you like your new Studio? I am considering purchasing the Studio 15 laptop, and install Arch over the default Ubuntu install. What about the touch sensitive multimedia keys? Is it possible to get them to work? And what about battery life? Thanks!
And also, if you don't mind describing your setup... desktop environment/window manager, etc. that would be great!
I also have a dell studio 15, so I think i can also respond to this. I love my laptop, it's awesome, it completely works. I ordered it with an intel graphics chip, not on the site but you can order it via the phone and a 9 cell battery. The media keys all work except for the far left one, the media key. They're recognized by xev, and I mapped them with xbindkeys. The 9 cell battery is awesome as well, I get a solid 5 hours of battery time with wifi enabled. I run arch with Xmonad.

Sounds great! I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!

zyghom · 2009-02-06 18:34:02

recompile kernel from abs changing 4GB to 64GB
this is what I always do with new kernel
I have same problem - core kernel26 shows only 3GB

fiod · 2009-02-07 07:52:28

Odd-rationale wrote:

Might be a little offtopic, but how do you like your new Studio? I am considering purchasing the Studio 15 laptop, and install Arch over the default Ubuntu install. What about the touch sensitive multimedia keys? Is it possible to get them to work? And what about battery life? Thanks!
And also, if you don't mind describing your setup... desktop environment/window manager, etc. that would be great!

The laptop works great with Arch-i686 (besides the 3GB problem), still didn't check with Arch64.
The battery claims to last 7.5 hours (!), didn't test it that long - but it lasted 6 hours with no sweat.

The screen is beautiful - tons of light, beautiful colors.

Everything worked "out of the box" with Arch, besides the wireless card (needed to download a package from AUR) and the multimedia keys -
which needed to be configured.

I can't really test the graphics card because of the INTEL GEM issue, waiting for 2.6.29...

Total impression:
Really good. Totally worth the 700$ it costs..

One bad thing:
The touchpad isn't that comfortable.

fiod

fiod · 2009-02-07 07:53:09

zyghom wrote:

recompile kernel from abs changing 4GB to 64GB
this is what I always do with new kernel
I have same problem - core kernel26 shows only 3GB

Don't I need to activate PAE?

Thanks
fiod

Kardell · 2010-01-21 07:21:51

I'm considering using this extension (PAE), but as I red it truly gives us more memory (this remaining, unused MBs of RAM up to 64GB), but cost more cumputing power to maintain this memory mapping algorithm.
In my case I've installed 4GB of RAM, but up to 1GB (minimum 256MB of dedicated) is shared with GeForce 8600M, so I assume it explains why I see everywhere only 3GB (Arch, Windows XP).

iceman81 · 2010-01-21 09:28:19

it's definitely better to use x86_64 if you have more than 2gb of ram

Kardell · 2010-01-26 21:06:37

I'd say: it's definitely better to use x86_64 if you have more than 3GB of RAM.
After move to 64-bit architecture I see the full memory capacity. This thing with GPU memory share is not applied as I assumed. Now I see full 4056596 bytes of DDR2.
How much my GPU takes from it? I don't now. I have to ask the driver. :)

Arch Linux

#1 2009-02-06 15:10:23

New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#2 2009-02-06 15:27:05

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#3 2009-02-06 16:20:31

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#4 2009-02-06 16:34:27

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#5 2009-02-06 16:39:46

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#6 2009-02-06 17:02:10

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#7 2009-02-06 17:04:53

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#8 2009-02-06 17:07:53

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#9 2009-02-06 18:34:02

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#10 2009-02-07 07:52:28

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#11 2009-02-07 07:53:09

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#12 2010-01-21 07:21:51

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#13 2010-01-21 09:28:19

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

#14 2010-01-26 21:06:37

Re: New Dell Studio shows 4GB on windows, only 3GB on Arch

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