Left 'high and dry' by lack of a non-pae kernel in 12.10

 I feel for you, you're in a shitty situation. My guess as to why the Pentium M's aren't supported is because not that many people use them. Your guess of "hundreds of thousands of Pentium M user's left out in the cold", is probably way, way off. If you consider that 85- 90% of people use Windows and Mac in North America, and only small percentage use non-pae processors, then there may exist a couple thousand people that probably have this problem. I'm not trying to be an asshole, but maybe you should consider upgrading your hardware in the near future. Anyways you probably already have Ubuntu 12.04 LTS . I found a link for you that contains a 12.04 non-pae .iso in case you don't already have it.

http://people.canonical.com/~diwic/12.04-nonpae/ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386-nonpae.iso

My understanding is that as of 12.10 non-pae will no longer be supported. So the best thing to do would be to stick with the 12.04 LTS release or switch to a different distro. You cannot just keep upgrading your O/S and software forever while using obsolete hardware. Eventually, as the OS/software use more CPU, more memory, better graphics/effects, your hardware will not be able to keep up, and will no longer run smoothly or be supported. So there comes a time when you just need to stick with one release (12.04) . All the best.

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/11/how-to-install-ubuntu-1210-on-non-pae.html

@Adam C: there are a good many Pentium M's out there (as well as non-PAE Atoms) that are all otherwise very usable if not for the PAE issue. They were never intended to be used on >4GB RAM, so some bean counter at Intel decided to make modern CPU's without PAE (not a forward-looking decision). I don't think the answer for these users is "get newer hardware" when they purchased the hardware relative recently.

@Dave Lentz

It seems the only options are:

a) Stick with 12.04

b)Use a complicated work-around, every time you want to get a new release

c) Get newer hardware

d) Use a different O/S

e) Somehow convince the folks at Ubuntu to add support for non-PAE computers.

I for one would choose options a, c, or d, but then again, I don't own a computer with a non-PAE processor, so I can't really say. Yes, I would be pissed off too if I were in a similar situation. I wasn't saying the only answer is to get "newer hardware", I was just trying to convey that the world of technology is an ever changing one, and eventually we are all forced to upgrade our hardware, whether we use non-PAE computers or not. People with non-PAE computers may just be forced to make that decision a little sooner than the rest of us. Either way, when purchasing new hardware we should think of the future, and ask ourselves, "Should I go with computer A, which is relevant in today's technological standpoint, or should I go with computer B, which is very advanced, and is not likely to be obsoleted in a couple of years".

12.04 is LTS so is supported long after even 13.04 is LTS. I'd go with that

Thank you for the advice on the routes I might take, but this is not really a 'what should I do' question.

As far as I understand it, 12.04 will be the final version that supports non-pae processors. I'd just like to know the logic behind that decision. Is it really that difficult to keep older hardware in the loop?

1) Despite the fact that my address space is restricted to 4GB, I've never found problems with that limitation.

2) If I stick with 12.04 I'm still only putting off the inevitable. There will come a time pretty soon when I will be faced with the exact same scenario.

3) I will ultimately be forced to junk three perfectly serviceable machines if I want to stay on the Ubuntu update path.

I have been a strong supporter of Ubuntu, and one of the main things I tell my MS and OSX using friends is that Ubuntu and Canonical are essentially community-driven rather than evil corporations. I have also been extolling the virtues of this family of distributions because they still run pretty well on your old hardware, and can extend the useful life of hardware long after it has been left behind by Microsoft.

I am beginning to reconsider my position in the light of recent events.

In general, I would like the leaders of the Canonical/Ubuntu development team to be more like themselves and less like Apple-osoft.

Yes 'the inevitable' will happen sooner if you install Quantal. Precise is supported til 2017.

This is not a strictly a 'complaint' nor a cry for help. I know that I'm not going to single-handedly change the PAE policy, and certainly not in this forum.

I just needed to understand the process of reasoning that led to the PAE kernel being dropped from Ubuntu, when there is clearly a subset of users who are still using using non PAE hardware.

Ubuntu is supposedly the friendly 'Everyman' distro. Every man that is... unless you are a man with a Pentium M.

Thanks Dave Lentz, that solved my question.

You're welcome (and I do sympathize). I personally would have made non-PAE the default for 32-bit as anyone with > 4GB of RAM will probably use 64-bit. The worst that would have happened in that scenario is that some users who insisted on using 32-bit would not have use of all of their RAM (but at least they could boot/install Ubuntu and install a custom kernel if they wished).

So yes, I understand kernel testing is time-consuming and that both PAE and non-PAE couldn't coexist. However, I disagree with Canonical's decision.

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