Hello ,
I have redhat 9 on intel pentium-4 processor.
I saw that some of my rpm are i386, some are i686 , and some ar eof
noarch format.

(I can know the type of rpm by rpm -queryformat ...).

Can someone explain what is the meaning of these formats?

If I go to an rpmfind.net and see rpm with i686 and with i386 extension,
which I should chose? (If I am not wrong it did happened to me twice or more, even though most
of the time there is only i368 *OR* i686 *OR* noarch (or something else)
version for one OS version (in this case, RH9).
regards,
sting

its about how the binary was compiled i think.

when you compile programs you can use the -mcpu=ix86 option (or -march=ix86)

if you compile with -march=i686, the code wont run on a 386 processor becuause of some code differences. i686 would be best (i think) because better instructions exsist in 686 than in 386 so i guess theoretically, the i686 code would run faster on an i686 machine and the i686 code wont run on a i386 machine.

that being said, my GUESS is that the noarch means it was compiled without the -march option used. This is my GUESS.


get i686 because u have a p4, i386 stuff might run slower, but any of them should work on your system, so if u cant get your hands on i686 rpms, just about any x86 version will work for you.

I think noarch means the architecture doesn't matter, like in the case of man pages or fonts or some other non-executable package.