Mint can't see all my RAM.
 

Hi all,

I have installed Linux Mint 13 on my Macbook 5,1. Mint is the only OS installed, it has replaced Apples OSX. The Macbook has an Intel Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM.

Everything runs great except that System information only reports 2.7GB of RAM instead of the installed 4GB. I am using a 32-bit install of Mint, should I reinstall a 64-bit version? Would really like to know where the other 1.3GB of my RAM is, LOL.

Any help is much appreciated!

A 32bit OS won't be able to use more than (what I believe is) 3.5GB of RAM. It's possible the GPU also has some of your RAM.

This is a limitation of the hardware. You have either to use a PAE enabled kernel (PAE kernels can see up to 64GB, although it is not reasonable to use 32 bit on such machines) or a 64 bit version of Mint.

It has the NVIDIA 9400M that has 256MB shared, that would account for about 3GB then right? Do I understand correctly then that I should reinstall Mint with a 64-bit version?

You can either do that or just install a PAE kernel.

I would try installing a PAE kernel first. With PAE, the whole OS will see more than 3.5GB of RAM, but each process will still be limited to about 4GB of RAM. With 64bit, the memory overhead with only 4GB of RAM might not really gain you anything over 32bit, you'll see more RAM, but your apps might consume more of it compared to their 32bit counterparts.

Ok, I installed the PAE kernel.

Good News: The system sees all my RAM now.
Bad News: It messed up Cinnamon, the NVIDIA drivers and my Wireless drivers.

I downloaded Mint 64-bit and ran the LiveDVD and it sees all of my RAM as well. I am probably going to just backup my data and reinstall Mint with the 64-bit version. I am marking this thread as "SOLVED".

Many thanks to you both, replica9000 & TobiSGD, for your prompt and helpful replies!

~TuxSurfer