I know that almost everyone uses an i386 compatible processor, but that can be dub divided into Amd, Intel, P3, P4, etc. I am really just curious as to the scope of linux. How old the hardware is, etc., and how if works for them.

Edit: On the pole...
The "AMD Athlon (XP)" option includes the regular Athlon and the Athlon XP and the Athlon MP...
The "AMD K5/K6" option includes the K7...
The "Intel 8086-486" option is anything intel 486 and earlier...
The "Intel Pentium Pro-Pentium 1 MMX" is anything from a Pentium 1 to a P1 MMX to a Pentium Pro...

I have linux on everything from a 486 to a pentium 4 2.4, havent worked with any amd systems yet though.

486 (c.11 years) Hard drive's dying out from under it or something.
Pentium (c.9 years) Somewhat limited.
Celeron (c.3 years) Eh, it's okay.
Athlon (c.3 years) Love it - main box.

(I checked 'Intel Pentium Pro-Pentium 1 MMX' because you didn't have a generic run of the mill P100 and 'other-ix86' because no Celeron.)

By "Intel Pentium Pro-Pentium 1 MMX" I mean anything from a Intel Pentium 1 to a Pentium 1 MMX which also includes a Pentium Pro... You only have 10 options and there are a lot of different CPUs. (Just like "Intel 8086-486" means a 8086, 286, 386, 486, anything in that class...)

AMD Athlon 1.73ghz for Slackware, and an AMD Duron 1.4ghz for Gentoo

I'm beginning to think I should have put Duron in place of Opteron... And the "AMD Athlon (XP)" I mean to be inclusive of both regular AMD Athlons and AMD Athlon XPs.

Not to be picky.... ok, so I am being picky....

I would lump the Pentium Pro with the Pentium II-III because it was, in fact, the first processor with the "P6 Arcitecture". The difference between the Pentium Pro and a Pentium II was packaging, clockspeed, cache, memory interface, and if I am not mistaken MMX. But at the heart of it all the Pentium Pro was still a P6 core.

I am disapointed to see I am the only one who has voted for PPC or "other non-x86" which in my case has been the coldfire (m68k core).

Intel Pentium I MMX
Intel Pentium III
Intel Pentium IV
AMD Athlon XP

jtshaw: I know what you are talking about. Acording to my one book, "Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 12th Edidtion," the Pentium Pro introduced what was called the "Dual Independent Bus (DIB) architecture" and yes, it it is the original P6. But I guess I was thinking more in time line then feature wise. If I could I would go back and make some changes to the poll, but I can't. And yes, there sould be an option for Motorola 68000-68040, but, I just didn't remember at the time, and well, there are only ten options. (I also would add a sparc option.)

P4 2600 running Slack 9.1
Celeron 700 running Slack 9.1

My slackware box uses a P-5 200mhz w/ MMX

Both of my XP computers have P4's in them. The older has a 1.7ghz, the newer 2.8 w/ hyperthreading. I'm working on my dad to let me get the 1.7 to have Linux on it, but he's pretty gun-ho about the whole Windows thing right now. Quick questions: My fan is really loud on my 1.7, either it's my fan, or it's my hard drives. What lets you slow down the fan? Is it apm or acpi?

What lets you slow down the fan? Well, I found this thing in a computer store that does it... It mounts in the place of a PCI card and has 3 positions, lo, med, and high. That would work, as for software control, I guess you could do it with the BIOS maybe... But the BIOS has to support it... Like in the Dell laptops, with the i8k module. That has a special interface for controlling the fan speeds, and the Dell laptops are acpi...

Thanks, but I'm talking about a desktop. I think I saw something about apci being able to do what I'm asking, I wonder if Dell Demensions have apci support....

amd athlon k7 7oomhz running mandrake 9.2
amd athlon k6 400mhz will be running slack 9.1 tommorrow.woohoo!

The only way to slow down a fan is to change the power going to it... I could explain it in great detail but that would just bore you. So the only way you can do it through your motherboard is if your motherboard supports changing the output voltage on the fan headers.