Hi, I'm fairly new to Linux. I'm running Fedora Core 3 on a Dell Latitude C640, P4 2.0ghz, 1024MB RAM. Installation was no problem. But updating it is confusing the hell out of me. I have 212 updates available it says. So after reading alittle I went into a terminal and typed this command that I found on a Linux FAQ site:

su -c 'yum update'

It's currently downloading and maybe installing? But I noticed most of the packages say 'i386'. And I thought I read somewhere on another site, possibly this one.. that the P4's were of the 'i686' architecture? Just someone let me know is there anything I did wrong.. or is there anything I will have to do after all the updates are finished in the terminal. Please post if you have any info.. Thanks.

No problem, most i386 packages should be able to work with i686 PCs (but not the other way around). So, you should be just fine.

You didn't do anything wrong. Not familiar with Fedora, but with Slackware, the packages are compiled to the lowest common demonator, e.g. 386 or 486 processors.

You have to compile the packages yourself, passing certain parameters to the compiler if you want them optimized to your specific CPU.

How do I go about compiling the packages??? or what..

You have to download the source code for whatever it is you want.

unpack it: tar -xvf sourcecode.tar.gz
cd sourcecode
./configure (this command will usually detect the processor and other obtuse vagaries)
make
make install

And that is it more or less.

I've glossed over a few things or this post would turn into a book.