On 2020-08-25, Ottavio Caruso  wrote:
> On 23/08/2020 21:50, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
>>
>
> My OP:
>
>>
>> My current Thinkpad is dying and I was wondering if the Raspberry Pi 4-B
>> 8GB would be a half-decent laptop replacement, obviously with the
>> addition of a portable monitor (suggestions?) and an external drive.
>
> Thank you all for the input.
>
> I just wanted to point out that my choice would go for NetBSD because,
> it seems, NetBSD can use all the 8GM RAM, while other OSes, including
> Raspbian, can only use 3GB RAM. I haven't really looked into details of
> why this happens, but I suspect it has to do with NetBSD using the Pi in
> real 64bit mode, while Raspbian running in 32-bit mode, both in kernel-
> and user-land. I could be wrong. I've asked around but I didn't get much
> feedback; maybe you could help.

Not true. 32bit RaspberryPI OS can use all the memory, but each process
is limited, basically to 2GB(*). So if you need more for one process then
you will need a 64bit OS. They are working on a 64bit version of
RapberryPI OS, but I am not sure what stage it is at.

Jim

(*) 3GB with some voodoo which I don't understand :-)

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