Arch on AMD k6 3D

celejar · 03-21-2005, 12:04 AM

I'd like to try Arch (I'm currently running Debian 3.0r2) but my box is an AMD k6 3D and the website says that the K6 isn't supported (there is stuff about outdated / unmantained i586 versions). Am I out of luck?

slakmagik · 03-21-2005, 02:30 AM

That's my understanding. AFAIK, the 586 version isn't *dead* or anything - just not available now but may be at some point. So I'd say you were out of luck for now. You could stick with Debian or try something like Slack.

DeusExLinux · 03-21-2005, 10:36 AM

Arch does only come in the i686 version. They have a problem keeping devs for the i586 version.

Slack might be good, vector should work, but if you want something that is going to come close to arch, I'd say arch or gentoo (gentoo would def work, but is a pain sometimes on slower hardware)

halo14 · 03-22-2005, 10:45 AM

I was under the impression that a K6 was an i686 processor??? that's very surprising that it's not... weren't the standard athlons a K6?? I have an original Athlon 900 MHz that I was one of the first boxes I tried arch on..before I was confortable enough to understand it... but it did install well enough... :/

DeusExLinux · 03-22-2005, 02:35 PM

As far as I know it's based off the i586, but I could be wrong.. I googled it with no help (but I saw some people saying to compile programs on a k6 with a march=i586 flag.... so, take that for whats it worth)

slakmagik · 03-22-2005, 06:48 PM

Yeah, I've got a K6 and it's a 586 equivalent.

celejar · 03-23-2005, 05:01 PM

Thanks everyone. I don't know enough about chip architectures to know whether the k6 is an i586 or i686, but as I mentioned the docs on the website state explicitly that the k6 isn't supported. I won't try gentoo if it won't work well on old hardware (475 MHz processor, 186 MB ram, 8 GB hdd). I suppose I'll keep debian or try slackware. I probably should switch to debian sarge (from woody) since woody's (3.0r2) libraries and other things are really outdated.

DeusExLinux · 03-23-2005, 10:29 PM

gentoo will work great on that older hardware, it will just take forever to compile all of your software... and I mean forever.. it took me 11 hours to compile KDE on a 2.4 GHZ

Debian is another solid choice.

celejar · 03-24-2005, 12:41 AM

Thanks for the advice. Big, rough compiles are a problem for me; they often break with sig11 (and sig4). I think it's a hardware problem (see http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/).

halo14 · 03-24-2005, 07:39 AM

I would say to go with VectorLinux if you want something that will be decently fast. I have used it on a number of computers all the way down to a Pentium MMX 200MHz with 32MB RAM... good luck!

cs-cam · 03-24-2005, 05:43 PM

I can't remember where I read it but apparently a newer K6 is i686 equivilant. The older ones are close, just missing a couple of instructions but you know, that's all it takes. If you don't know when your chip was manufactured then maybe just have a go at installing it, if it works yippee and if it doesn't what have you lost?

celejar · 03-25-2005, 04:00 PM

Thanks, I'll check out vector. I don't know if I want to experiment with arch since I have a dialup connection and getting isos is a pain.