Hello,

I'm very fasanated with Linux, I want to learn more and am very curious to learn. So, naturally I have a couple of general quesitons:

1.) I have a notebook running Redhat WS. What is better a source or a RPM? My Linux tells me I have a i686 machine. If I find an i386 RPM would it be better to install a source? I think i686 is faster or something right?

2.) I think I heard a way to make Linux run better with my Pentium 4. Should I attempt to configure my Linux to my CPU or would it be too advanced for a beginner?

3.) Also, does anyone know a very informative website where I could learn more about Linux?

1) most apps won't run any differently if they use the extra cpu flags, just things like media players etc. for these apps you can normally find a specific i686 rpm. stick to rpm's really, it's so much cleaner until you really understand why you'd want source installs.

2) depends what this secret magic trick is... if it's recompiling your kernel, then there's going to be little benefit really. only look at things like this if you really think you're not getting the performance you want and think you should get.

3) linuxquestions.org

Welcome to the community,

Here are some answers...

1. I think RPM's, for now, are good enough for you. If you need to build rpms from source, you would have to read up on it before you can start doing it. Whereas packaged RPM's give you a freedom to just install it. I would also recommend you use APT-GET or YUM so you can avoid so called RPM hell. Google on it and you would know. i386 rpms run on all machines upwards and including i386 which means they run well on i386, i486, i586 and i686.

2. You are probably talking about kernel compile. Although the kernel that comes with RedHat has optimization for your systems and you may not need exact optimizations so long as you are extremely picky about it. If you want you can always compile a kernel on your own but before that you need to know what all hardware you have in order to compile driver support for it in your kernel. Kernel compiles for newbies can be tricky and you are bound to have a couple bad compiles. There are many kernel compile how-to's on this site as well. Search on this site and google and you'll hit a mother load . As for a beginner you are good with default system...learn about your system and linux in general and then dive into source and kernel compiles.

3. The Linux Documentation Project website, www.tldp.org

once you get further along however building linux for yourself can make the difference between being a happy linux user and one who thinks everything is too bloated and slow to be worth your time.
You can easily get say a 25% performance boost better than rpm type distributions by building your system yourself if you really really know what you are doing

imagine for a second how fast and efficient you could make a web server if all the software ran from within the kernel instead of going through glibc that be like about a 400% performance gain or something if you did it well ?

so yes powerusers do better

Hello,

Thanks soo much for the information! It's a stepping stone to further equipment myself with knowledge. Thank you guys again.