Dropline not an option.
 

Installed Slackware on my linux PC, replacing Mandrake, and got everything working okay up until now.

Tonight I tried to install dropline gnome and apparently I cant because my PC is a 586 (surely it isn't) and dropline only runs on 686 upwards. Urrghhh, given the problems I had with previously trying to install Slack on my laptop (before I dropped it, the laptop I mean). I am kind of thinking that running Slack is a bad idea.

I know there are alternatives to Dropline, anyone know if installing them would cause the same problem.

:tisk:

Well, what does say?

Your processor may very well actually BE a 586. Truly. However, I find it hard to believe that you have a 500mhz 586. Are you POSITIVE it's not a 686?

Result of command cat /proc/cpuinfo

The AMD K6 was the replacement for the Intel Pentium-II, both where part of the 686 family processors (the Pentium name came from 586)

The k6 is indeed a 686 compatible processor, so Dropline will indeed work with it. It's not exactly the fastest processor in the world, but it's fast enough to run most of Gnome at full speed.

I've been researching for awhile, looks like your specs fit exactly this processor, but I could have missed... it should run everything fine as the 686 processor that it is.
Check the output of uname -a

The dropline-installer checks /proc/cpuinfo to validate that you have a 686 CPU. It will not run unless your CPU meets the requirements.

i686 chips were first sold with the Pentium Pro, nearly 12 years ago; And virtually any Intel CPU sold since 1997 is i686 compatible, just like every AMD CPU since 1999. If you have a Pentium 2 or Athlon, then you are fine. Note: I build Dropline packages on a p3 450 (not my main desktop). While slower CPUs work fine for GNOME, it's at its best with something a little closer to the 1 GHz range. A reasonable amount of memory (256 MB or more), however, is more of a requirement than a fast CPU, but as much as 512 MB will be fastest (with no noticable difference for most applications once you exceed that).

That said, Freerock GNOME http://gsb.freerock.org and GWARE http://gware.org are available and are compiled "-march=i486 -mcpu=i686". Any of the three GNOME releases will run on your CPU.

Thanks for the input, really helpful.

One more question is which is the best for the above CPU, freerock, gware or dropline. Given the warnings about incompatibility that Dropline gave whilst running
dropline-install
would you go ahead and install anyway.

For what it is worth, my laptop with an early AMD K6 that is supposed to be i686 compatible will fail to run a good deal of i686 software. So badly in fact, that I once had to reinstall Slackware when I foolishly installed a bunch of unofficial packages that were optimized for i686.

I don't believe that the K6 is truly i686 compatible, though there were some crafy marketing methods that were used to make the product seem competitive (e.g. the 6 in the name). They were, in fact, considered to be 6th generation processors (like the Cyrix 6x86 - note the x in the name), but are simply compatible with the 5th generation socket 7 (Pentium) CPUs, in spite of their naming and marketing schemes. In fact, the Cyrix chips identified themselves as 80486. For a chip to be truly compatible with all of the instruction sets, it would have to be able to correctly duplicate all of the functionality of the Pentium Pro chips.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I686
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I586

fwiw i've got an amd 300 mhz amd k6 runs slack 10.2 w/kde 3.5.4 and madwifi even openoffice.

Old Fogie, I believe he's asking about packages specifically compiled with a 686 processor and optimized for 686.

@harishankar: well I'm confused then :( because I made my own amarok for my amd/k6 and it made it with the 686. I made it on an i686 desktop pc and moved it over. Isn't that they same thing? Or is it the base system being i486 for slackware...oh heck I'm lost.

He is talking about packages compiled with "-march=i686". If the k6 is truly a 686 processor, then they should work perfectly, but apparently it is only slightly 686 compatible, so I don't know then.

I can't remember which ones it is at just this moment, but much like the VIA C3 chip isn't "quite" able to be used as an i686 because of a missing flag, the K6 is technically an i586 because it's missing a number of i686 instructions--which is why it's flagged as a 586 in cpuinfo.

...and while it's likely fast enough (same speed as my notebook on a battery), I can definitely say it won't work (crashes will happen), but that he will probably be absolutely ecstatic with XFce (which is what I'm using when I'm not testing dlg builds or watching my acx driver go berzerk on the notebook).

AMD was at least right in that it performed on par with any 686-pentium of the same clock speed that one cared to throw at it.