which 64bit distro supports 4gb ram and the ati fglrx video driver togther
 

I was using Ubuntu hardy 64bit it ran great with no serrious problems that was until Iadd more ram when I did that I couldn't run the ati fglrx video driver and have 4 gb of ram at the same time so I switched to opensuse 11 64bit it seems like an ok distro it seems good but is a little bit to buggy for me I am wondering which other 64 bit distro is out the that supports having both 4gb ram and the fglrx video driver

Suggestion: Break up the run-on sentences so your questions will be easier to understand.

Short answer:
1. I don't know why there would be a connection between the amount of memory and whether a particular driver is provided or supported.

2. All 64-bit distros will support 4GB of RAM--For that matter, any 32-bit distro will also support 4GB.

3. I think the fglrx driver is obsolete. I was on this trail recently, but flamed out when I solved my immediate issue.

When I added the ram to my computer it wouldn't boot to the Ubuntu desktop at first I thought that the ram was messed up so Ito it back and exchanged it for new ram after about an hour of messing around trying to boot to my desktop I went onto the Ubuntu forums and was informed that I wasn't able to have both the fglrx video drivers and the ram apparently this will be fixed on the next distro that Ubuntu comes out with.
As for the fglrx video drivers these drivers are the only drivers that I have tried that actually get the 3d working for my ATI 3780 video card Ican play fps games without any problems but if I were to try other video drivers I cannot play any games that depend on my video card. also I haven't heard that the fglrx drivers are obsolete at least not on any of the gaming forums that I belong to they all only use those drivers for the ATI video card which video driver do you use that is if you have an newer ATI card and on line Game? because if this is the case and there is a driver that would work so that I could use both I would switch back to Ubuntu hardy in an instant lol.

All of them.

well the only one that works so far out of three that I have tryed is opensuse 11 I just installed Kubuntu 64bit and when I booted I had like a 1/4 desktop on the upper left side and another desktop was behind it which I cannot get to I updated everything and installed the fglrx drivers and couldn't boot just like that happened with Ubuntu hardy so far I am stuck with opensuse11 , I would showy ou the screen shot of my messed up desktop but I am not sure how to add it to this post

I can't follow this. This is why I suggested that you break up the run-on sentences.

well if by opensuse you mean opensuse with kde4 that will be buggy as kde 4 isnt really finished yet so if that was what you meant you should try kde 3.x or gnome i personally dont like gnome but it might be to your taste so id be trying the kde 3.x version to check memory you should use memtest make sure that you allow it to run for a fair while some of the tests are quite extensive and you can only be completely sure that you've discovered obscure errors if you do run it for an extended period You should do this before returning ram OTOH it sounds as if your problems were not obscure hth

must be the gallon of coffee I drank plus the lack of sleep .
ok I will try this again
As for the fglrx video drivers,
these drivers are the only drivers that I have tried that actually get the 3d working for my ATI 3780 video card.

when I have tried other video drivers I cannot play any games that depend on my video card.
I haven't heard that the fglrx drivers are obsolete.
every gamer that I know that uses Linux all only use the fglrx drivers for the ATI video card.

if you have an ATI video card which video driver do you use?

if I could use a different video driver that works just as good or better then the fglrx driver and would not cause problems in Ubuntu I would switch back to Ubuntu hardy in an instant lol.

how do I change to kd 3.x?

I really don't follow video cards. I was installing a new distro and (temporarily) could not find the "radeon" driver, which has always done everything that I need. In the process, I could not find fglrx---but I did find "radeonhd" which is apparently an experimental advanced driver.

My limited reading hints that Nvidia may be a better choice. If nothing else, it is apparent that they have a much stronger commitment to Linux support than does ATI. My system installs with Nvidia graphics have always been painless.

Finally, you should be able to get any video driver working with any mainstream distro. There might be some issues with loading the right kernel modules.

I have 64-bit gentoo with the fglrx driver. only 1Gb of ram but I was about to upgrade to 4Gb. I believe there is an option in the kernel to support 4Gb or more. maybe that's the issue? why is fglrx obsolete? I have a Radeon X1200 should I be using another driver?

1. 32 bits kernels can address up to 64 GB of ram with PAE enabled, at a slight performance penalty.
2. You can use all the ram you can imagine in x86_64, no special tweaks needed.
3. fglrx is not obsolete, in fact, it's the only driver that ATi support, because it's the only one they provide. There are some alternatives, if you don't mind losing some performance and features, that is.

So, you shouldn't have a problem with 64 bits + 4gb + fglrx, UNLESS fglrx itself has some bug about that, which I don't know, but wouldn't surprise me.

All in all, ATi is a mess if you ask me. The driver might work or might not work depending on many factors, like the card and the driver version, whether you use xinerama or not, etc. etc. etc.

EDIT: It seems you are not alone: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33821469

the strsnge thing about this is that I have opensuse running with the ram and the fglrx but it doesn't work with kubuntu or Ubuntu hardy

If you go to YaST2 -> Installation Sources, be sure to check the "Community Repositories" button. Then add the ATI repo. You may be able to install the video driver you need for your kernel using the package manager.

There is nothing wrong with the fglrx driver, and it works fine on Debian, which I assume, means it works fine on Ubuntu as well. Drivers are one of those things you have to fight with until you make them work, then they're never a problem again. I remember how difficult it was, but I never did figure out why. After a while, they worked and they've worked ever since.

The biggest problem, i think, is people trying to install both the vendor's version, then their distro's version. they're never compatible, and after failing with one, you'll never get the other to work until you remove all traces of the first.

generically, you need to install it and then select it when you log in the details of how you install it depend on the distro and install media but there will be an installer (a sub-menu in yast or synaptic, as examples depending on whether we are still discussing suse or a debianderived distro) if you are installing from a full DVD 3.x should be available on that, but if you only have a CD or its a limited version you may not have it available there so you would have to go to the 'net to get it - assuming that you have the bandwidth available thus wouldn't be a problem just a bit of a delay as kde isn't small once you have done that the chooser you use to log in with should show the new gui as an option although its probably hidden behind something like session type so you'd need to click on that and select the appropriate option

There's a lot wrong with that driver, but that's for another topic. Drivers sometimes can behave differently with different kernel configurations, maybe that's worth a shot as well. You could copy the kernel config from a working distro (it's in /proc/config.gz) and compile a kernel with the same configuration on the other distro, and see how that works out.

This is another thing that might worth a shot. Make sure you are using the same versions of the kernel and the driver in both distros. 3rd party drivers (and specially the ATi ones) change a lot from version to version. The ATi drivers are a very buggy piece of software, specially when used when xinerama they are horrid, and the latest releases include a lot of fixes for that and many other things (i.e. hangs when exiting X and such things). The 8.9 drivers have just been made available, try them.

I may be wrong but I have the impression that this is a motherboard issue. A little research shows that this is issue occurs with both ATI and Intel cards and that the motherboard is mostly ASUS. I see a few references to Gigabyte as well, which does not really surprise me considering that Gigabyte tends to make boards that are very similar to ASUS ones.
As posted out in another thread on this subject, I was affected by the very same issue two years ago using an ATI1600 and an ASUS P5B. The system would boot up to where fglrx was supposed to be loaded, at which point it would simply freeze. With a bit of experimentation I discovered that it would boot fine if I disabled memory mapping in BIOS - which of course meant that the OS had only 2GB out of 4GB to work with and would be equivalent to simply swapping out 2GB physically. This worked for both the 32 bit kernel and the PAE kernel. When I installed a 64 bit distro and re-enabled memory mapping in BIOS, there wasn't a trace of a problem anymore. Cleary, something went very wrong in kernel space. As long as 2GB was left for I/O, all would be fine but it wouldn't be if less than 1GB was left.
Now, did anyone read the story about the Ubuntu user who kicked up a scandal after decompiling the BIOS on his Foxconn and discovering that the thing was using corrupt Linux tables? Could it be the case that ASUS and Gigabyte are using the MS compiler too, which appears to be much less strict than the Intel compiler to the point of letting this kind kind of bug slip through?

One thing that I find strange is that I can load up opensuse 11 with the fglrx drivers and my 4 gb ram without any problems , but I cannot do the same with any Ubuntu distros I have tried.
Are you saying that this is a possible kernal problem? If that is the case could I take a kernel from a place like http://www.kernel.org/ and just make my own , kind of like the way they build Arch Linux?

well, yes, you could do that. This is easy to follow:
http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_ubuntu
If you are feeling adventurous, you can even strip it of all that you don't need, which will make your sytem boot a bit faster (but that is the only area where a custom makes your system faster).
Of course, if you compile your own kernel, you will have to use the fglrx driver that you can get straight from ATI.

Ithink that Ijust might do this. I did install Arch almost successfully a few months back, almost meaning that Icouldn't get the Fglrx driver to install , everything else worked but the fglrx.\
Thanks for the Link :)

I am wondering if I compiling my own kernel how do I make it 64bit?
(Iam a little embarrassed because I have almost totally forgotten what I did while installing my Arch linux

Well, install 64 bit whatever and compile the kernel, nothing special required - but don't forget to copy your existing config from the boot directory first.

Thanks I will do that

ok I tryed to make my own kernal and I recieved this message
"linux-br0b:/usr/src/packages/RPMS/x86_64 # rpm -ivh kernel-2.6.26.5Custom-1.x86_64.rpm
error: failed to stat /home/Shadowfire/.gvfs: Permission denied
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
package kernel-2.6.26.5Custom-1 is already installed"
I found out that it was some bug so I thought that I could just ignore it and continued.
After about another 20 or so minutes I installed the kernel and changed the grub default to my custom kernel 2.6.26.5, Rebooted but it wouldn't boot to desktop and my computer froze Ihad to do a hard reboot and switch back to the original kernal. I am thinking that the problem is that bug.

now if I successfully make a kernel that works could I use that kernel in any linux distro on my computer?

Yes and no. You wouldn't use the same compiled binary but you can use the same config file. Considering that getting that file right is the most challenging part, that is about as good as simply re-using one kernel on another system.

Why not? The kernel doesn't link against external libs, it doesn't depend on any external api/abi. You can use the same kernel amongst all your distros without any problem.

Because on most distros, you would pack your kernel into the system specific format (deb, rpm, whatever).

And?

I mean, you install the binary image into /boot (call it vmlinuz or whatever). And then modify your grub.conf or lilo.conf to add the kernel.

All you need to boot a different distro with that kernel is to copy the same configuration over and over and change the root= parameter.... I don't see why the package management would get in the middle of that. I never use my distro's package management systems to handle my kernels. I use only vanilla kernels, and when I need a concrete patch, I patch by hand. All my distros at a given time boot the same kernel, and I see no reason why a kernel would be good for a distro and not another.

Where can I learn to do this? things like making my own patch .
I guess I should first learn how to make a kernel that works .the last one I made well didn't work properly I booted and I made to just before my desktop then my Computer froze and I had to do a hard reboot :(.
But I really want to learn how to do this correctly

Because you would then have to fetch and compile any proprietary drivers manually. Not necessarily more work, more a matter of preference.

Just reuse your config file from the boot directory to your kernel directory and compile as is. Obviously, that means you will still have all the unneeded modules but at least you will have working kernel. Then you can tweak it a bit at a time if you feel like it.

Do you mean "compile your own kernel"?

Well, it's a matter of selecting the correct drivers as[*] in menuconfig. There are only two things that you need to boot a system usually: the driver for your chipset so you can access to your HDs, and the driver for the filesystem of your root partition (ext3/2, reiserfs or whatever you use).

The rest can wait, and it's a matter and trying, recompiling and rebooting. Less urgent stuff.

Installing gentoo is a good way to learn the internals of these things. Using the handbook and the manual installation of course, the livedvd graphic installer never worked correctly, and you wouldn't learn anything from that anyway.

This is a good way to get it working quickly ;)

4GB ram 64-bit linux 2.6.27.7
 

Why does the video driver have anything to do with how much ram is recognized?

I compiled linux 2.6.27.7 from source from http://www.kernel.org/ to my Debian Lenny/Sid distro.
It works fine except, I have 4GB ram and an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E4600 @ 2.40GHz. But only 2.3 GB of ram shows up.

ocelot:/home/john# lshw -c memory
*-firmware
description: BIOS
vendor: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
physical id: 0
version: 6.00 PG (03/05/2008)
size: 128KiB
capacity: 448KiB
capabilities: isa pci pnp apm upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect socketedrom edd int13floppy360 int13floppy1200 int13floppy720 int13floppy2880 int5printscreen int9keyboard int14serial int17printer int10video acpi usb agp ls120boot zipboot biosbootspecification
*-cache:0
description: L1 cache
physical id: 8
slot: Internal Cache
size: 32KiB
capacity: 32KiB
capabilities: synchronous internal write-back
*-cache:1
description: L2 cache
physical id: 9
slot: External Cache
size: 2MiB
capacity: 2MiB
capabilities: synchronous external write-back
*-memory
description: System Memory
physical id: 18
slot: System board or motherboard
size: 4GiB
*-bank:0
description: DIMM
physical id: 0
slot: A0
size: 2GiB
*-bank:1
description: DIMM
physical id: 1
slot: A1
size: 2GiB
ocelot:/home/john# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2320232 2057860 262372 0 305576 930196
-/+ buffers/cache: 822088 1498144
Swap: 8305564 0 8305564
ocelot:/home/john#

Why? I compiled a 64-bit AMD64 kernel.

ocelot:/home/john# dmesg
[ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
[ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
[ 0.000000] Linux version 2.6.27.7-hou2.2-02.jmc64 (root@ocelot) (gcc version 4.3.2 (Debian 4.3.2-1) ) #1 SMP Tue Nov 25 09:21:12 CST 2008
[ 0.000000] Command line: root=/dev/hdb1 ro vga=792
[ 0.000000] KERNEL supported cpus:
[ 0.000000] Intel GenuineIntel
[ 0.000000] AMD AuthenticAMD
[ 0.000000] Centaur CentaurHauls
[ 0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f400 (usable)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000000009f400 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000008fee0000 (usable)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000008fee0000 - 000000008fee3000 (ACPI NVS)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000008fee3000 - 000000008fef0000 (ACPI data)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000008fef0000 - 000000008ff00000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000e0000000 - 00000000f0000000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] DMI 2.4 present.

I don't know what those BIOS-e820: lines mean.

Cheers,
John