Hi, I build my new PC and installed zenwalk 5.2 without problems

CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2,4 GHz)
RAM - 2x2GB PDP Patriot LLK 800MHz CL4
motherboard - Asus P5VM DO (intel Q35 chipset)
video - Gigabyte nVidia GeForce 8400 GS
HDD - 2x Western Digital Caviar RAID edition 250 Gb (SATA 2)
DVD - Pioneer DVR-215 DVD+-RW (SATA)
card reader - chieftec 25-in-1

I had no problem installing or configuring Zenwalk, DVD and card reader works well. I downloaded nvidia drivers and they work fine too. Creating RAID array using mdadm was very simple.

the only "problem" I had was connected to the RAM - Zenwalks kernel is compiled with 1-4GB RAM option therefore only 3,2 RAM was available. After downloading kernel source and recompiling it with up to 64 GB RAM option I have 3985 MB available what is more or less correct.

Why by default 4+GB RAM support isnt enabled in the Zen kernel?

Possibly because a 32-bits OS can only address 4 GB of memory at most (2^32=4294967296) . Zenwalk would have to go 64-bits first to be able to use more memory.

Wrong. A 32bit linux kernel can address 64GB of RAM with no problems. Read the first post carefully.

This is correct - linux can support up to 64 GB RAM without going 64 bits.

Ah, OK, so PAE is the trick behind this . Should have known better from the old DOS days, all that dealing with himem.sys, emm386.exe and such .

THen why its not be enabled by default? Why a src has to be downloaded and recompiled for one who has 4+ GB RAM.

One reason might be that PAE is not supported on all CPUs. According to the information in /usr/src/linux/arch/x86/Kconfig, that comes with the kernel source:

There are still quite a lot of ancient Pentiums around that happily run Zenwalk - I still have one here . But I run self-compiled kernels on my machines anyway, most important reason being to be able to use CIFS instead of SMBFS.

Why don`t have Zenwalk 2 kernels?
One for old machines and another kernel for new machines ?
This solution eliminate this problem.

Please make 2 kernels for next release.

Well that will raise alot of confusions and queries plus a bit space in the repos and maintanence work 2. Its good that, the modern processor holders recompile the kernel. By default, Zen will be having kernel src in /usr/src. So they can recompile that itself.

For a beginer is`nt a good idea to recompile kernel.
Is`nt confusion if exists 2 kernels in repo or in cd.

Please make 2 kernel and put them in repo and cd(next release).

Well, still the 4+GB RAM era isnt much in the outter world. So lets see in the future, plus jp has to decide on this.

2 kernels should not be confusing if you point out clearly what purpose they each serve .

One kernel for machines with less than 4 Gb Ram (a standard kernel) and a kernel with 4 Gb Ram support for new generation.
Make this and all will be happy.

You know the way to the feature requests don't you .

'Please' helps too...