Memory usage i686 vs. x86_64

[Owen Taylor]

On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 17:52 -0500, Michael Cronenworth wrote:
> On 09/05/2014 05:49 PM, Michael Cronenworth wrote:
> >
> > Yes, but you're getting that memory back "free" by the extra address space 
> > opened up on x86_64. Look at your free space numbers. You're given, albeit 
> > small, more free memory on x86_64. 
> 
> Well I just realized you're talking about 2GB here, but with low RAM prices and 
> systems coming with 4GB standard I don't think 2GB is a fair starting point.

We decided in the last workstation WG IRC meeting that we're going to
list the RAM requirements as "2GB or more". Yes, 4GB (or more) is the
reasonable configuration for our target users, in these days of $10/GB
memory, but:

 * Allocating more than 2GB to a VM on a 4GB system is difficult.

 * There are some people who have old systems that, for whatever reason,
   would be hard to increase the memory on.
  
 * Listing our memory requirements as 4GB sounds like Fedora is much
   more memory intensive than competitors, and it isn't.

So, given that, the question I was trying to answer is whether if
someone is trying to use Fedora Workstation on an actual 2GB system,
whether using i686 is an advantage. The answer seems to be that if you
are actually using Fedora day-to-day on such a system (not doing a quick
test in a VM), then you would be better off using i686.

- Owen