After working several years in a high-volume data center, I can pretty much guarantee that it is not the fault of Linux :)
More likely, it is just older RAM that has been waiting for downtime to actually fail. I have seen my share of servers that run fine for years until someone powers them down and then hardware issues crop up.
Well, I will say that about a year ago I had a similar problem with these RAM ‘chips’ on win7.. total fail, with exception of one.. strangely, the 1 that worked then (and after 2 weeks before I put the others back in), it is one of them to fail now :/ the only one that is working now failed then... what a strange world :p
Ok, will try to upgrade RAM asap.. :p