Non-pae kernel support missing in 12.10

[MNLipp]

When I wanted to upgrade my nc6000 to quantal, I found that this isn't possible, because there is no longer a non-pae kernel available. (The CPU on this laptop seems to be missing some required extension.)

Linux has always been well known for (also) supporting older hardware. And I can asure you that a nc6000 can support Ubuntu quite well. It may not be the fastest machine, but I can do many things during travels and don't have to be afraid of loosing an expensive notebook.

Of course, you might argue that I should stick to 12.04. But although being LTS, at some time in the future support for 12.04 will be dropped nevertheless. And currently, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't be using my nc6000 still in, let's say 10 years.

What's the problem in continuing the support for the non-pae kernel? It takes another compilation with one switch set differently, but this shouldn't really be a problem.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 1072311

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[Daniel Letzeisen (dtl131)]

Logs would not be relevant here, so changing to 'Confirmed' to stop the automated messages. Most likely, the bug will be marked 'Won't Fix'.

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

You may find some valuable info in bug #930447 including links to two 12.04 non-pae images.

I've personally chosen to stick with Ubuntu 12.04 which is supported until April 2017 on my non-pae machines using the options I discussed here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1959675

I even put up a thread about using Gnome classic (no effects) in 12.04:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1966370

That's a good solution for me for the next 4 1/2 years ;^)

[MNLipp (mnl)]

Somebody marked this as a duplicate of #897786. I removed that again, because this isn't possible. Bug #897786 is marked as fix released, but as there is no non-pae kernel on the installer CD, I cannot see how my reported bug has been fixed.

If the Ubuntu team insists on setting this bug to "won't fix" without providing a reason why there is no more non-pae kernel on the installer CD, then I have to accept that. But I think it would be a good idea to have a rationale. Others will stumble across this in the months to come, I assume.

[Daniel Letzeisen (dtl131)]

The Ubuntu Technical Board has decided not to support non-PAE in Quantal. because it is too much of a hassle to maintain (and they have to worry about new kernels for ARM and such). If that reason is not detailed enough, you should request more information in bug 897786, as the kernel devs are already subscribed to it. I agree that Fix Released status for Quantal is a bit confusing (should have been 'Won't Fix'), but nevertheless, the bottom line is that Canonical has decided there will be no non-PAE kernel for Quantal, and that this bug is a duplicate.
Any further inquiries should be made to bug 897786. Thanks.

[JohnWashington (ubuntu-johnwash)]

@MNLipp, I completely sympathise with your view. I even know of FOUR of my acquaintances that have run into this problem, using non-PAE machines. If I know of four, how many zillions are there out there who'll also encounter this and struggle with it? Especially since I'm in the UK, not exactly a 3rd world country where reuse of older machines would be more common.

Ubuntu == humanity to others? Maybe in the past, but clearly not now. MNLipp, I think this issue has been discussed at length and I see no hope of the attitude being turned around. At least with Linux we have choices. Perhaps Debian will remain more inclusive. Or Mint. Or ...

And yes, I think making this a duplicate of bug #897786 is wrong. The other bug appears to me to be about a need to revise installers because of the crazy decision to drop non-PAE, whereas this bug is flagging up that the decision is crazy. Though, crazy or not, reversing the decision is as likely as turning around an Intercity Express by standing on the tracks waving a red flag. :(

[MNLipp (mnl)]

I've tried a workaround since reporting this bug: I've installed Fedora 17 and it works great!

The most obvious improvement is that I now get gnome-3d (Ubuntu 12.04 always switched back to gnome-classic and I've never liked the Ubuntu Desktop). I didn't do any measurements, but things even feel a bit smoother (may be imagination, of course, but newer kernels *are* supposed to do things more efficiently, aren't they?). All this confirms that there is definitely no reason to turn this kind of hardware into garbage as the Ubuntu team has done! I can easily run Open- or LibreOffice. I can browse the web and watch videos (though I avoid switching to full screen ;-)). I can even run Eclipse and do some development work.

Of course, Fedora is a bit different and some packages are a bit more tedious to install, but before you go out to buy new hardware, give it a try!

[Bernd Kreuss (prof7bit)]

The CPU will most likely run the PAE kernel just fine, its just the unneccesary check for the pae flag that makes it hard to install Ubuntu. Most of these affected not so old Intel CPUs have indeed 36 address bits and can run these kernels and are only missing this flag for whatever reason (probably not even intentionally).

Proper fix would be:
* remove the check in the bootloader and just let the user decide what he wants to boot
* remove the check in the linux-image-*.deb preinst scripts and let the user decide what he wants to install