So I am extremely disappointed that with all this functionality and support - there is no kernel that supports 4 + GB's of RAM on i386 arch. Debian and most ever other distribution have a "bigmem" kernel available in their repos however on Ubuntu it 1f40 appears there is no option.

Does anyone know what my option is before I just wipe this disk?

You could compile a customized kernel yourself with this ability.

Never complied my own kernel so I would not have the slightest idea what needs to be included. I would be afraid I would leave some critical modules out of the comiple process and end up with a crap kernel.

I am afraid that I do not understand you, why don't you go for the easiest and most reliable solution and go for Ubuntu 64 bit? It would take much less time and be more reliable than compiling a kernel, also the number of packages between Ubuntu 32 bit and Ubuntu 64 bit are very much the same with only a few things missing in Ubuntu 64 bit.

Maybe this how to will help you to compile a kernel : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=56835

Sadly I use Adobe's flash plugin far too much for videos I use on youtube and other things. Flash works on Ubuntu64 however the moment two applications like Firefox tabs try and use it at the same time, it crashes. Its far too unreliable in Ubuntu64.

Download the deb's for debians bigmem kernel and install it. It will most likely work with Ubuntu...

You do realise that you are resurrecting a thread that is more than two months old and that the OP may have moved on don't you?

This thread is closed.

If I was interested in helping OP's only I would have gone around the forums sending PMs everywhere. Other community members may have a similar question, find this thread and value my reply.

Hopefully, I didn't step on too many toes by resurrecting this thread.