I know if I have to ask this question that I am unworthy to call myself a geek , but I am relatively clueless here.
How do I figure out what my architecture is? I am new to linux and only came into it because it was necessary for work. I would like to put it on my home computer and have been eyeing Debian for a couple of months.
To figure out what images to download I need to know my machine's architecture. I have windows running; is there somewhere in the settings where I can find out what architecture my comp. has?

Thanks for humoring me

-fisher

If you have a pc-compatible computer, it is an x86 architecture (386, 486, 686). Athlon processors are x86 as are Pentium processors. If you have a Macintosh, it is a power pc, or PPC architecture.

The other ones like sparc, alpha, arm, etc. are not likely to be found on a home desktop computer.

If you run windows, you want the i386 version of Debian.

If you select "system" from the control panel (or right click on "My computer" on the desktop and choose "properties") it should show you a window with info about your CPU type, memory, etc. The CPU part tells you the architecture, like Pentium, Athlon, or whatever. If in doubt, go with any generic x86 or 586 images you can download.

Your arq is X86. If your box is PII, PIII, Celeron, P4, AMD k6/K7, it's a 686, if the only choice is i386, take it, that's you too.

P = Pentium

The simple command to check your architecture is "arch". Another command that shows your architecture plus gives some other crucial info about your computer & os is "uname -a". You can also view the bootup kernel messages that give you lots more info about your system by using the "dmesg | more" command. If this doesn't yet satisfy your curiosity, you can do "cat /proc/cpuinfo".

deadparrot,
are those DOS commands? I don't have Linux on that system yet.

Ah, sorry. Once again I wrote a reply without carefully reading the question. Mea culpa. Those are linux commands and they will be no use to you at this point. You don't happen to have a handy Knoppix CD around where you could try these linux commands?


You can go to this page http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/sy...ysteminfo.html and download Belarc Advisor or Everest Home Edition (or both). These programs should give you some detailed info about your cpu and other hardware while you are still in Windows. These programs might also become useful when you configure Debian -- you should know the names and models of your network card, sound card, video card, and monitor (and also your monitor's horizontal and vertical refresh rates).

As for your original question, the three answers above my posts will point you to choose the correct installer images. It is not really necessary to know the details of your processor at this time, just knowing that it belongs to the i386 family is quite sufficient to help you to choose the right CD images.