A simple question about distros in general

[lazygamer]

Ok I was wondering something. I have I386 redhat ISOs, I assumed that I386 is another way of saying "Non-ancient intel chips". After reading another thread here, I got thinking that maybe I386 simply means that the distro is compatible with chips as old as 386, and thus not optimized for more powerful stuff. So is there I486, I585, and I686 versions of things like Redhat?

If there is, and there is a decent performance boost, it would be worth a download. Oh, and if there is, what would the Celeron 433 be? 586 or 686?

[Calum]

there's probably i686 versions and i386 versions.

i have seen a lot of mandrake i386 rpms but i know that mandrake only supports pentium and up, also i heard that AMD chips should use i586 instead of 686 software.

In short, i don't know, but maybe there's more info on the red hat download page (i presume that if there's a 386 version, there would be a 686 version on the same page?) or else over to somebody else!

[voidmain]

RedHat doesn't put out different versions of their distro within the same processor architecture. They only put out one x86 (Intel/AMD compatible) version. They signify this with i386 meaning it is capable of running on 80386 processors and higher. Contained with that i386 distro are kernels optimized for i386, i586, and i686. It will detect at install time what processor you have within the Intel compatible range and install the appropriate kernel. All of the rest of the software included will run on any of the processors in the x86 family from 80386 on up.

In addition to x86 based processors they have put out distros for DEC Alpha and Sun Sparc processors. But you are not limited to these processors. For instance, IBM and Red Hat have customized the distro to run on their entire line including mainframe:

http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/solutions/s390da/applications/prredhat.html

And some Intel based hardware vendors have included optimized versions of Red Hat. When VA-Linux was still in business (which I had purchased a few servers from) they included an optimized version of Red Hat. Basically they just recompiled the entire distro with specific processor optimizations for the processor they used in their servers.

[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Calum]

quote:Originally posted by void main:
They signify this with i386 meaning it is capable of running on 80386 processors and higher. Contained with that i386 distro are kernels optimized for i386, i586, and i686. It will detect at install time what processor you have within the Intel compatible range and install the appropriate kernel.

clever devils, aren't they! thanks for this! i have learnt something today now!  

[voidmain]

I should be a little more specific about this. The newest Red Hat 8.0 comes with the following 2.4.18-14 kernels:

Single processor machines:
i586
i686
athlon

Multi processor machines:
i686
athlon

What this means is you need at least a processor higher than a 486 to install the stock Red Hat 8.0. It will run on the earliest Pentium on up. I think with little effort you could build a Red Hat 8.0 CD that can be installed on older machines but I personally would not want to do that. You certainly wouldn't want to run OpenOffice and the other apps on an old piece of crap, but it might be suitable for a firewall or something.

Sorry for the confusion in the previous post. It wasn't misinformation because the older distros supported the earlier processors. i386 in the distro name today just signifies it's the Intel x86 compatible version.

[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[preacher]

quote:Originally posted by lazygamer:
Ok I was wondering something. I have I386 redhat ISOs, I assumed that I386 is another way of saying "Non-ancient intel chips". After reading another thread here, I got thinking that maybe I386 simply means that the distro is compatible with chips as old as 386, and thus not optimized for more powerful stuff. So is there I486, I585, and I686 versions of things like Redhat?

If there is, and there is a decent performance boost, it would be worth a download. Oh, and if there is, what would the Celeron 433 be? 586 or 686?

Ok I run a 433mhz celeron on my webserver and its i686.