I’m not overly worried about a few random Linux distros that did strange things, nor raspberry pi’s. I mean I don’t know why you’d use 32 bit on an 8gb pi anyways, so it shouldn’t affect anyone unless they did something REALLY strange.
For the average user, neither of those scenarios mattered, especially back when the problem was at its peak.
2 years was a long time to wait to use the extra memory that Linux could use out of the box.
I honestly don’t even remember XP having PAE, but if you NEED the validation, sure, Microsoft EVENTUALLY got it.
Except that Microsoft removed it in SP2 LOL!
And all the home use versions of XP still maxed out at 4gb.
There could see the memory but couldn’t use it, oh I’d forgotten that!