On 21 Dec 2006 at 16:34, James Wilkinson wrote: > Larry Phillips wrote: > > > Sounds good. I went to the Ditribution page at fedora.redhat, and > > found a couple of Canadian distributors. Right now I am trying to > > figure out which distribution I need. I see 1386, x86, x86_64, and > > i686 all spoken of, and the vendors I have found so far seem to only > > carry i386 and x86_64. Will the i386 distribution do for a 486 or > > Pentium machine? > > Firstly, no Fedora release works on a 486. Oh! I thought I had a 486 om my Dell machine. I guess it can't be, because Fedora Core 3 is happily running on it. Unfortunately I can't confirm this, because I have no idea how to query the processor type from the OS, and it doesn't seem to want to stop at the BIOS when I hit F10 on power-up. > Secondly, these days i386 and x86 are effectively the same thing -- the > 32 bit architecture introduced with the Intel 386. i686 includes all the > (few) extra instructions added by the Pentium Pro -- so that also > includes Pentium II, AMD Athlon (or later) or recent VIA processors. > > Fedora i386 includes support for i586 processors if you happen to have > an older PC. There isn't a separate i686 release -- Fedora i386 also > supports these processors. Glad to hear it! I ordered a Core 6 i386 CD set, after scratching around a little, and deciding it must have been an 1386 version I installed Core 3 with. > Hope this helps, It does. Thanks a bunch. Larry -- O Sibili, Si. Ergo Fortibus es in ero. O Nobili! Deis Trux. Vatis inem? Causen Dux!
