The different versions of Mandrake (and most RPM programs) are compiled for certain processors. This means that the human-readable source code in which the program is written is translated into computer-readable bits and bytes in the language specific to each type of computer chip.
Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote a great explanation of this back in August that I still refer to. (found here: http://www.mail-archive.com/newbie%40linux-mandrake.com/msg75668.html ) He wrote: ==================== i386 = intel 80386 and compatible. i486 = intel 80486 and compatible. i586 = anything built on intel Pentium technology, including Pentium MMX. i686 = anything built on intel Pentium Pro technology, including Pentium II/III and Celeron. The Pentium 4 is an entirely new chip, and for the moment has no specific compilers. Since x86 chips are backwards-compatible, you can use i686 packages. AMD Athlons and Durons have their own architecture (and even their own compilation options in gcc), but are also compatible with i686. The AMD K6 series is Pentium-class, and so is 1586 compatible. > Does this mean that my current distro doesn't use the full capacity of > my cpu? Would the system run faster/better with the i686 edition? Usually the speed boost isn't large enough to make a real difference. That doesn't stop me from compiling all my packages for i686, though :-) ========================== To which i would add, that if you run across an rpm which says PPC, it is compiled for PowerPC processors (Macintosh), and if it says src, it is actually not compiled, but contains the instructions to compile it yourself, so would work on any type of chip. Let me know if this makes any sense. - Paul Rodriguez On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 11:28, Tom Harris wrote: > What do you mean by "the 486 optimized version"? > > Tom. _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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