i386, i586, i686, athlon!??
 

whats the difference between all these!??
i tried to download rpms but all they are
different to me... i run a P4 2.2 processor
and i really don't know what to use...

could anyone explain these to me!??

thanx!

P4=i686

P3 or better I believe is i686

If you do a search actually you can find out, here's the search string:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...der=descending

Cool

These are generations of computer processors. the i stands for Intel. They all end in 86 because that's the name, if you like, of the architecture of the processors (The 80x86 architecture). The 386 came out in the mid-eighties, the 486 in 1989, the 586 (aka Pentium) in 1992. Before then was the 286, the first 16-bit processor, and before that the original 8-bit 8086, usd in the first IBM PC-XT machines.

In programming terms, the difference is the available instructions of each generation, since each program statement needs to be compiled into binary instructions that a processor can execute.

Aside from the x86 instruction set there's the x87 math coprocessor set, and more modern extenstions include MMX, AMD's 3DNow! and Intel's SSE. This is why there is an option specific to the AMD K7, because far more efficient binaries can be compiled if the K7 specific instructions are used.

You'll know what it all means eventually (honest!)...

-Taiyo

thanx...

so when ever i want to download rpm i look for i686, right!??

For the best performance, yes. But you can run any with your i686 processor :)

The geeky but l33t method:
 

Or, for best performance, and less "failed dependencies" errors, you can download the sources and compile yerself - there's instructions included in every decent source package.

These packages are either tarballs that you (usually) unpack into /usr/src then compile and install, or source RPMS (SRPMs) that do it automatically.

I usually compile myself even if RPMs are available, it's often worth the extra hassle, took a little practice though:study:

cool... that really makes sense now!

thanx for the help!