Pentium confusion too!

[captainzog]

Vector Linux might fit the bill, but with a pentium 4 if you have at least 256 mb ram; most distros may be OK if you avoid the really big distros

Hi, chicken and egg situation here. I have an intel P4 1.7GHz machine currently on windows XP, I want to dump XP and install Debian Linux, but still confused as to which processor file type to download. I found this:

'check the contents of the file /proc/cpuinfo. If it says "cpu family: 6", you have an i686. Similar for 3, 4 and 5.'

So, in windows (currently running on the machine I want to Debianise) what is the equivalent command to get the processor info?? All it says on boot up is 'Intel pentium 4'

The numbers on the processor chip after 'Intel Pentium 4' are:

1.7GHZ/256/400/1.75V

Thanks all

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

Check this post for an explanation on CPU naming schemes:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/per...a64-em64t.html

Let us know should you need additional help.

[i92guboj]

If you choose x86, then your cpu can run i686 object code. It will be able to run any previous subset as well like 586 or 386, however i686 should perform better.

Your cpu also supports 64 bits instructions set, so going 64 bits is another option.

[_madman_]

This is one of the biggest sources of confusion with Debian GNU/Linux. If you are running anything 386 or beyond then you are supposed to chose "i386" unless you want to use the 64bit word size and addressing on your shiny x64 cpu (uses more memory though). They could have used a more generic term like ia32 or x86 but it all goes back a long time ago when Debian only ran on one x86 processor - the 80386.

To further add to the confusion, all of the official (pre-built) binary packages for "i386" are actually tuned for i486. i486 happens to be the worst of ALL x86 optimizations (because of its increased code size, lack of backward compatibility, and it even runs slower on pentium chips than regular i386 code).

When you get to the point of custom compiling source packages, you can still add CFLAGS="-O3 -march=i686" to the end of your ./configure line to optimize for your cpu type (i686 in place of difficult to decipher cputype) If all else fails, just roll back your cpu to a type that you know supports all your proccessor opts like "pentium3". When you compile the program you will still get "i486--pc-linux-gnu" lines on your screen, but the actual binaries produced will be optimized for your cpu (with the -march= option).

So, in other words you don't have a choice to make, if your computer will run MS Windows, choose i386 like the rest of the herd.