Ok brand newbie please help

[BlenderGuy 0]

I'm sick of windows fed up, no more microsoft in my house ever.

 

Ok now that thats off my chest im looking to DL a copy of Linux. I've gotten myself familiar withn jigdo and am ready to DL. My only question at this point is what is my 'puters architecture. I've been unable to find a listing anywhere. I'm thinking im x86 but i may be way off. my computer is an Athalon 800 MHz.

 

Any help is much appreiciated-

BlenderGuy

[PC-Janitor 0]

Hi Blender Guy,

 

Welcome to the fold.

 

The Athalon processor in it's most basic sense is a replacement for or alternative to the Intel range of processors. So a i386 distro will work for your Machine.

 

That may be the answer you need, however in the current climate of optimisation, you don't have to be tied by backward compatibility. In theory the basic elements of an i386 distro will run on a well specced Intel 386. If you really wanted to.

 

When it comes to installing your chosen distro, there may be an option to choose from a variety of kernels optimised for your processor, if you are in luck. It's often possible that there is already be a kernel optimised for your processor which could offer some speed benefits, better utilisation of the CPU instruction set and even enhanced use of functions that exist on more modern motherboards. With Red-Hat/Fedora RPM's, you would look out for the 'athalon' designator in the kernel name.

 

Bear in mind however that cutting edge kernels may be fast, but equally may have problems with stability and be totally unsuitable for production machines.

[BlenderGuy 0]

Thanks PC Janitor, I've downloaded the i386 debian now i have only to figure out the ISO burning thing. Cant seem to find a decent utility for the burning that doens't want money :-/

 

Thanks again-

Blenderguy

[Dapper Dan 0]

You could try out the demo version of Nero. I bought it, and it's a pretty good utility. Not nearly as good as k3b is though. If you do use it, be sure not to use the "wizard." Click open file and choose "burn image" when creating from an iso.

 

You're brave to try the Debian install! I tried 5 times and never could do it. An easy way to have Debian is to install Knoppix which is Debian based and gives you acces to Debian apt-get repositories. The install is much easier..

[Maillion 0]

Quote:

Thanks PC Janitor, I've downloaded the i386 debian now i have only to figure out the ISO burning thing. Cant seem to find a decent utility for the burning that doens't want money :-/

Thanks again-
Blenderguy

Just in case, be sure to check the md5 checksums against the ISOs you have downloaded, and be sure that you burn them as images... 8)

[PC-Janitor 0]

Quote:

Just in case, be sure to check the md5 checksums against the ISOs you have downloaded, and be sure that you burn them as images... 8)

Worthy point, check out this discussion if you're not sure about about md5 checksums. (There are probably other similar threads you could search for)

[Mel 0]

I use CDBurnerXP Pro to burn Linux iso's from WinXP

It works great and is free . You can D/L it from any site

that has freeware. Be sure you set your burning speed to

8x or less.

I have only one non working disto but that's because I

burned it 48x.( Way too fast.)

Try going to linuxiso.org and D/L and burn MEPIS or ARK

They both install with only 1 or 2 answers from you. Thier

installers are pretty good at detecting hardware.javascript:emoticon(':D')

javascript:emoticon(':D')