I am a Linux enthusiast.

The kernals have become a lot more upgrade-friendly. I've literally pulled my own hard drive out of my laptop once, and stuck it into a desktop. Linux booted right up, and I didn't need any drivers. My office desktop hard drive has been in three different desktops without a hitch. Linux is very upgrade friendly. Even if you're running 32-bit Linux, the kernal will handle up to 16GB of RAM, due to how it handles the PAE flag.



Since the BIOS isn't showing the RAM, the OS can't be the problem.