[PLUG] Ubuntu 12.04 requires pae on the CPU?

[Scott Garman]

On 05/14/2012 05:49 PM, Richard C. Steffens wrote:
> So, after burning the right iso, I tried to boot it on my laptop. I get
> the error message:
>
> _________________________________________________________
>
> This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU: pae
>
> Unable to boot -- please us a kernel appropriate for your CPU.
> _________________________________________________________
>
>
> Sigh. My desktop machine has the feature, but my laptop does not. On my
> desktop machine, I ran:
>
> rsteff at moonguide:~$ grep pae /proc/cpuinfo
> flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca
> cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx
> constant_tsc pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl cid xtpr
> flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca
> cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx
> constant_tsc pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl cid xtpr
> rsteff at moonguide:~$
>
> I tried running the same thing on the laptop and got nothing back.
>
> The desktop CPU is an Intel Pentium 4. The laptop is an Intel Pentium M.
>
> My first bit of Googling showed that there is a way to get 12.04 that
> doesn't need pae, but that defeats the purpose of having both machines
> running close to the same software.

I assume you're referring to the amd64 version of Ubuntu for the Pentium 
4, and the i386 version for the Pentium M?

Running those respective versions on your machines should still be 
"equivalent" software - you can make sure the same list of packages is 
installed on each machine. Userspace applications can use the same 
configuration files, etc. It's just that the software will have been 
compiled with some different CPU optimizations and the kernels will be 
somewhat different.

If you want absolute binary compatibility between the two machines, you 
could run the i386 version of Ubuntu on both of them. But I'm not so 
sure you really need to do this.

Scott