Ubuntu 12.10 and 12.04 use the PAE Linux Kernel by default for 32bit ISOs and while you could use the mini ISO to install Ubuntu 12.04 on computers that don't support PAE, that's not possible in Ubuntu 12.10.

Further more, with 12.10, Xubuntu and Lubuntu no longer come with a non-PAE Linux Kernel, so by default, you can't install any Ubuntu 12.10 flavour on computers using CPUs that lack PAE support (such as Intel Pentium M).

Below you'll find instructions on how to install Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal on computers that don't support PAE. The instructions have been tested on the default Ubuntu 12.10 ISO (with Unity), but they should work with any Ubuntu flavour like Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and so on and probably Linux Mint 14 as well.

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Ubuntu 12.04 (as well as Kubuntu 12.04 and newer Ubuntu versions) uses the PAE Linux kernel by default for 32bit ISOs so old computers that don't support PAE can't boot the latest Ubuntu version. But there is a way to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin on computers without PAE support: using the non-PAE netboot Minimal ISO (there are also some alternatives, see below).

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Some time ago we talked about using more than 3 GB of RAM in Ubuntu 32bit which involved installing the server kernel. Well, this is no longer possible in Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10). According to the Ubuntu wiki:

Note that the i386-server flavour is being dropped. I can think of no good reason to continue to support a 32 bit server. The 32 bit -generic kernel ought to suffice for those headless implementations that have used the -server flavour in the past, such as home gateways.

Installing the server kernel was needed so that you'd had a kernel with PAE enabled (alternatively, you could just compile the normal kernel and enable PAE).

But because many OEMs and users requested a 32 bit PAE enabled kernel, Karmic Koala now comes with linux-generic-pae meta package which enables PAE in Ubuntu 32 bit, thus allowing you to use more than 3GB of RAM.

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