Linux x86/x86_64 Will Now Always Reserve The First 1MB Of RAM

[summand]

Give it a couple of decades, and we'll see a commit to reserve the first 1 Gigabyte of RAM. You won't care because your laptop has 4 TB of RAM. We we chuckle with nostalgia at the days when RAM was discussed in Megabytes.

When I was young, I had 64KB of Ram in my C64. And it was hard to address everything since it could only address 64 KB and the ROM also needed 20KB. So, you would need to do "switch" between ROM and RAM to access everything. Those good old days. I was never more happy with a computer.

[sdack]

Give it a couple of decades, and we'll see a commit to reserve the first 1 Gigabyte of RAM. You won't care because your laptop has 4 TB of RAM. We we chuckle with nostalgia at the days when RAM was discussed in Megabytes.

This is assuming we continue stupidly with the trend and I doubt many will be chuckling at doing the same mistakes over and over again. I would rather see this nonsense cleared up by getting rid of proprietary software, doing whatever the fuck it wants, and move on to free and open software with well defined and more agreeable behaviour. It is only annoying that one year after new hardware appears on the market the manufacturers keep updating their BIOSes to fix issue after issue, and to stop as soon as they move on to new hardware and leave you with a BIOS that was never working well in the first place.

[PluMGMK]

Give it a couple of decades, and we'll see a commit to reserve the first 1 Gigabyte of RAM. You won't care because your laptop has 4 TB of RAM. We we chuckle with nostalgia at the days when RAM was discussed in Megabytes.

More likely the first 4 GB, as in the entire 32-bit protected-mode address space. Since right now, what's actually being reserved is the entire 16-bit real-mode address space, which happens to be a megabyte…

[lucrus]

More likely the first 4 GB, as in the entire 32-bit protected-mode address space. Since right now, what's actually being reserved is the entire 16-bit real-mode address space, which happens to be a megabyte…

Most likely nothing above the 1st MB, as the 32-bit protected mode addresses aren't "real" (which is why 16 bit mode was called "real" in the first place), so they can be relocated without reserving anything of the lower 4GB.

[devius]

How am I going to run the latest kernel on my 386SX with 1MB of RAM now??!??

/joke

[blackshard]

How am I going to run the latest kernel on my 386SX with 1MB of RAM now??!??

/joke

And what about my 8086 from 1988? I just cleaned it up from dust a couple of hours ago to let it boot from floppy (no HDD), just to see it still works!
Plenty of RAM for the age, 640Kbytes!

[torsionbar28]

This is assuming we continue stupidly with the trend and I doubt many will be chuckling at doing the same mistakes over and over again. I would rather see this nonsense cleared up by getting rid of proprietary software, doing whatever the fuck it wants, and move on to free and open software with well defined and more agreeable behaviour. It is only annoying that one year after new hardware appears on the market the manufacturers keep updating their BIOSes to fix issue after issue, and to stop as soon as they move on to new hardware and leave you with a BIOS that was never working well in the first place.

While I agree with everything you've said, the unfortunate marriage between Microsoft and the hardware vendors isn't likely to dissolve any time soon. Each time MSFT releases an even more porky bloated OS, the hardware vendors all jump with joy, as they know everyone must upgrade their hardware to run the new OS. Newer faster consumer hardware makes MSFT jump with joy, as they now have an excuse to bloat up their OS some more. They each drive business to the other. Like parasites in a symbiotic relationship.

The only wrench in the works these days is AI and Cloud, which shifts workload away from the client. But I have no doubt MSFT will devise creative new ways to encumber client hardware. The always-on telemetry (read: spyware) baked into Win10 is a good example.

[sdack]

While I agree with everything you've said, the unfortunate marriage between Microsoft and the hardware vendors isn't likely to dissolve any time soon.

I do not see Microsoft as the issue in this case. It is the fault of mainboard manufacturers who choose proprietary BIOSes. Once manufacturers start using free and open software for BIOSes will it lower the costs and it will improve the quality. But as long as manufacturers do not work together in creating a free and open BIOS software will the manufacturers continue to fix issues on their own, pay licensing fees for it, pass the costs on to the customers, who end up with broken and awkward BIOSes, for which OSes need to implement work-arounds. The only winner here are the makers of these proprietary BIOSes, who are now going as far as implementing graphical user interfaces to distinguish themselves from other makers.

The graphical users interfaces of BIOSes that I so far have seen are all horrible. One cannot get into a BIOS setup without a keyboard, and the mouse control is worse than that of any OS I have seen in the past 30 years. Not to mention the total boot time that x86 PCs these days spend in the BIOS.

[PluMGMK]

Most likely nothing above the 1st MB, as the 32-bit protected mode addresses aren't "real" (which is why 16 bit mode was called "real" in the first place), so they can be relocated without reserving anything of the lower 4GB.

I was being facetious. But I guess they are "real" enough if CR0.PG is off (which is of course impossible in 64-bit mode)…

[CochainComplex]

"640 kB ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates* - now we can't even start to boot without less then 1mb.

*I know it is controversial if he has ever said that.