i386 refers to the old 386 processors. All current Intel/Athlon compatible processors will work with i386 compiled binaries. i586 refers to Intel's Pentium chips. i686 refers to Intel's Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III and Pentium IV chips. AMD's K6 processors can fall under the 586 or, sometimes, the 686 spec. AMD's Athlon, Duron, Thunderbird and all current 32 bit processors fall under Athlon. If your system is running a PII, PIII or PIV, you can download and install the i686 kernel. You can find this out by looking at the specs for your laptop (the thing will usually list the brand/model of the processor somewhere near the keyboard, on the box in which it came, the paperwork which came with the laptop, the manufacturer's web site). You can also "cat /proc/cpuinfo" to get the processor information. Or, you can just use the up2date/Red Hat Network tool, which will download and install the correct kernel for your processor. On Sat, 6 Sep 2003, Andrew Robinson wrote: > This is a pretty simple question. How do I know what my architecture is? > Specifically, what's the difference between i386, i586 and i686? How do > I find out which my laptop is to know which kernel to install? > > Thanks! > > Andrew Robinson > > > -- Mike Burger http://www.bubbanfriends.org Visit the Dog Pound II BBS telnet://dogpound2.citadel.org or http://dogpound2.citadel.org:2000 To be notified of updates to the web site, send a message to: site-update-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with a message of: subscribe -- Shrike-list mailing list Shrike-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/shrike-list
