Re: Configure.help editorial policy

Eric S. Raymond
2001-12-21T21:09:28Z

David Garfield <garfield@irving.iisd.sra.com>:
> Eric S. Raymond writes:
> > What, and *encourage* non-uniform terminology? No, I won't do that.
> > Better to have a single standard set of abbreviations, no matter how
> > ugly, than this.
>
> Valid argument. I will point out that the current version is
> non-uniform. Quoting from Configure.help :
>
>
> > # Choice: himem
> > High Memory support
> > CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM
> > Linux can use up to 64 Gigabytes of physical memory on x86 systems.
> > However, the address space of 32-bit x86 processors is only 4
> > Gigabytes large. That means that, if you have a large amount of
> > physical memory, not all of it can be "permanently mapped" by the
> > kernel. The physical memory that's not permanently mapped is called
> > "high memory".
> >
> > If you are compiling a kernel which will never run on a machine with
> > more than 960 megabytes of total physical RAM, answer "off" here
> > (default choice and suitable for most users). This will result in a
> > "3GiB/1GiB" split: 3GiB are mapped so that each process sees a 3GiB
> > virtual memory space and the remaining part of the 4GiB virtual memory
> > space is used by the kernel to permanently map as much physical memory
> > as possible.
> >
> > If the machine has between 1 and 4 Gigabytes physical RAM, then
> > answer "4GB" here.
>
>
> Note "3GiB/1GiB" and "4GB".

Yeah, that's because I can't touch the symbol namespace. Not yet, anyway.
--
Eric S. Raymond

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression: for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that
will reach unto himself. -- Thomas Paine