PAE / NX enabled or disabled for Debian Wheezy 32-bit?

[codeeditor]

Hello

I'm using Virtualbox on Windows 7 x64 with Intel i5 M430 and 4 GB memory on board.

Installed Linux Guest: Debian Wheezy 7.1.0-i386 / 32-bit with 768 MB memory available. It is used for localhost 32-bit LAMP server (without GUI). After adding new VM Virtualbox wizzard:

PAE/NX option is disabled
VT-x/AMD-V enabled
Nested Paging enabled

by default on Virtual Machine properties. Debian Kernel installed by default:
3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.46-1 i686 GNU/Linux

For Ubuntu Server PAE/NX is enabled by default in VM properties. Should I enable it than for Debian guest as well? There will be any advantages of using it (eg. performance, better memory management, stability) or just possibility to assign more than 4 GB of memory (which is not available on my PC)?

I was reading Virtualbox documentation where i found information
"Some operating systems (such as Ubuntu Server) require PAE support from the CPU and cannot be run in a virtual machine without it." - but how about Debian Wheezy? It seems for me that it can run without PAE/NX enabled.
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_bit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
but still it is not clear for me if it's better to enable ePAE/NX or not for my x86 Debian Wheezy Server Guest on x64 Windows 7 so community please give me some tips.

Edit:
I'm confused as well little bit about information that for systems that lack NX hardware, the 32-bit kernels now provide an approximation of the NX CPU feature via software emulation that can help block many exploits an attacker might run from stack or heap memory. For me it's mean that even if Host Processor Support PAE/NX and on Guest VM system PAE/NX is disabled in Virtualbox VM properties and Debian Wheezy with 32-bit 3.2.0-4-686-pae kernel is installed as guest - PAE/NX features are still enabled but via software instead of hardware emulation - that's correct?
Best Regards

[michaln]

If the guest OS boots up without PAE (or NX), it doesn't need PAE (or NX). There were some Linux kernels which required PAE and would just crash/hang if it wasn't available, without any hint to the user as to why.

Note that neither PAE nor NX can be "emulated in software". Some of the effects of NX can be approximated by other mechanisms though.