Blackmoor Vituperative

Fedora 12 has been released into the wild, and the general response is positive.

Every time a new version of Fedora (or any major Linux distribution) is released, there is always a great deal of confusion over the various releases: x86, i386, 686, and so on. Here is a quick guide that covers the vast majority of cases:

i386

• A generic “lowest common denominator” designation for Intel 80386 compatible CPUs (includes all of the above, but does not take advantage of extended instructions on those later CPUs).

Don’t use this unless you have to.

i686

• All Intel 32-bit Pentiums (excluding Pentium 1 and Pentium MMX)
• All AMD 32-bit Athlons

If your computer is several years old, you will probably have nothing to lose by using this version. However…

x86_64

• AMD’s Athlon 64, Athlon 64-FX, and Opteron
• Intel EMT64 processors – Pentium 4, Pentium D, Pentium Extreme Edition, Celeron D, Xeon and Pentium Dual-Core processors, the Atom 230 and 330 and in all versions of the Core 2, Intel Core i9, Core i7, Core i5 and Core i3

If your computer is less than a few years old, try this version first. If it won’t work on your machine, you will know almost immediately. If it does work on your machine, you may find that the performance is improved slightly (when compared to a 32 bit kernel), because the compiler was able to take advantage of slight improvements made in the instruction set for your processor.

So, start with x86-64. If that does not work, try i686. If that doesn’t work, try i386.

Good luck!