i386, i486, i586, i686 .... these are 32-bit processor arcitechture ... eg. Intel Pentium, AMD K6, etc

x86_64 are the 64 bit processor architechture ...

when you want to download linux isos, some distros have a choice of isos either for 32bit processor or 64bit processors.... if ure using a 64bit proc .... take the isos with x86_64 on its name .... if ure using the generic 32-bit procs.... juz select the isos with x86 (i386, i486, i586, i686) ....

so for a standard tower i need i386 ?

It means that i386 is for you to use with a system that is based upon a pentium 3, pentium 4, athlon ,duron processors, that are all 32bit.
while x86-64 is for processors that can handle 64bit processing like the new pentium D, athlon 64, etc.

what processor r u using???

Now i understand

Thanks

Charlie

I recenty installed X86_64 version and it worked perfectly. No issues with installation at all. I have double Xeon processor. I had troubles installing older version of RH, such as 9.0 on this system due to SATA drives, but Fedora installation was a snap. The most troublesome part was downloading the CD's (took two days)

You have such a powerful system and you use dial up, that must hurt.

FC4 is worth installing because it is not microstuffed windoze.

Now we are getting somewhere. Not being part of the evil empire is as good of a reason to install FC4 as I have heard.

Well...

It's neither Windows nor Debian nor Slack nor Puppy...etc

As I understood the question, is:

'Is it worth compared to installing other versions of Fedora?'

And the answer as with any other distro is:

That depends on your preferences and what you want to use it for.

I don't think it's for a production environment.
I don't think it's for a non technical novice.
I think it's very nice for a technically savy person exploring Linux.
I think it's very nice for exploring virtualization and other newer technologies like SE Linux.
I think it's nice in a home environment.

It is quite stable, but not 100% mature. By "Mature" I don't mean just the distribution, but all the community and support around it.

FC2 and FC3 are "Mature", meaning that pretty much all the wrinkles have been found and there are either solutions or workarounds.

I'm still on FC3 and wavering right now. I NEED to reinstall from scratch as when I began I did an "everything" install, as I was new to Linux and didn't know which programs to go for. This makes the system slow, and slow to boot and also I want to start again. But Fedora could be a lot easier to use, all that messing with MP3s etc etc and not having a graphical package manager (except for the joke one which just shows you what's on the DVD).

So I'm thinking about Ubuntu right now. The brilliant Synaptic. A really good website where you can find everything, and a nice slim 1 CD install - that you add to as necessary. Thoughts Anyone?? My preferences "a home/office desktop as easy as possible to use, yet flexible and cutting edge - in short the best that Linux has to offer"

Well...

I am used to FC3 installing and updating with yum. But that's right, you need to know the actual name of the package before you can install it.

It really needs a package manager that shows you the applications categorized like synaptic. Although FC3 also has apt-get repositories, so it must work with synaptic, isn't it?

The FC series are NOT for production use. They are development steps used to modify, quantfy and test different aspects of the system in preparation for the RH production systems. The official RH/FC support dies within 12 months of release. Note, to my knowledge, FC1 is no longer supported by RH/FC. The FC series is a 3 month turnaround for releases ubuntu is 6 months. The communties around these distro's give support for a liitle longer.

"32 bit and 64 bit" there is your about your processor architecture....
your processor has registers.. and the registers have size(16,32, or 64 bit)......that's for easy..

I don't have problems installing FC4, my friend had one.. hanging on getting the installation cd boot (on usb bla bla bla)

but now I have problem....
I can't see the fonts in terminal after I get to X.....(ctrl+alt+F1-F6), not xterm....
I can type&execute commands there , but I can't see anything...
this also happens when I switch to init 3 as default.....
it boots...can see the login prompt(int he terminal), and the problem reappears if I type startx(go to X).. can't see the terminal....
it used to work fine on FC3....didn't change any hardware.......

still looking why...........

Each country has a preferred keyboard layout. I use the Microsoft Canadian French Keyboard, which has accents, and some character constructions that are not found on the US keyboard. My keyboard, for example, has the euro symbol, whereas the US standard keyboard has none. I can write é wtih my keyboard, but not with the USA one.

Finally, if you are from a Spanish country, you would have the inverted exclamation mark, and inverted question mark as special keys.

So, there is a brief keyboard fact story.