On Sat, 2003-09-06 at 02:40, Vladimir G. Ivanovic wrote: > >>>>> "ar" == Andrew Robinson <awrobinson@xxxxxxx> writes: > > ar> This is a pretty simple question. How do I know what my > ar> architecture is? Specifically, what's the difference between > ar> i386, i586 and i686? How do I find out which my laptop is to > ar> know which kernel to install? > > `uname -a' will tell you. Sort of, yes. Remember however that athlon will report as i686. You can always look in /proc/cpuinfo to find out exactly what the kernel thinks of your processor, although it won't specifically tell you the 'arch'. The common arches are: i386 The 80386 cpu, a least common denominator of sorts. All of the higher numbered common processors include the i386 instruction set. Most rpm packages are "i386". i486 Almost nobody makes rpms tuned for this chip, it was a short lived stepping stone to the Pentium. i586 The original Pentium processor, and the Original MMX capable Pentiums. Also includes some non-Intel chips like AMD K5, AMD K6, Cyrix, and other lesser players. i686 This is a large group of machines, including the Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium IV as well as their Xeon, Celeron, and now Centrino cousins. Also might include the Transmeta Carusoe. athlon AMD created the Athlon and Duron processors. Other (non-x86 compatible) arches: alpha My favorite non-x86 processor, and doomed to eventual oblivion by HP. `nuff said. ia64 The Intel 64 bit processors, called Itanium. They can run some programs make for i386 and up, but *slowly*. amd64 Also temporarily known as "x86_64". These are the new AMD Opterons, and soon the "Athlon 64" ppc A lot of machines actually fit under this category, and I am not familiar with most of them, some Apple Macs, some are mainframes, and lots in between. ppc64 64 bit version of the ppc, again I couldn't really name any. There are many others I can't name off the tip of my head. -- Chris Kloiber -- Shrike-list mailing list Shrike-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/shrike-list
