i586 proggies on i686
 

I've seen a lot programs for linux, but its really hard finding the ones for my platform..

is it possible to run i586, i386 etc.. on my i686 platform?

or will this give me a nasty bug/corruption?

Yes, you can run i386, i486, i586 and i686 code on an i686 processor. There won't be any problem with versioning, as the i686 is call-compatible with the 486, 486 and 586.

Note that the converse is not true; with Intel architectures, each chip keeps adding new instructions, so 386 code will run on any x86 processor, but 486 code won't usually run on a 386.

great, so as long as I dont use a chipset that's higher then my chip I should be good :).. whats the intel P4 classified as?

i686

Well, so long as you stick to x86 binaries, that holds true. But you can't run (say) a PPC program on an x86 at all; you'd need a PowerPC processor for that.