[CentOS-devel] Why does CentOS 5 claim to be i386 compatible when it's really not?

Ross Walker rswwalker at gmail.com
Tue Dec 14 18:14:54 UTC 2010


On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 5:02 AM, Martin Jungowski <martin at rhm.de> wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Dec 2010 17:08:24 -0500 Peter A wrote:
>> Over the past few years, i386 has become a synonym for 32bit rather than
>> "it will run on a 80386". The RPM package for the kernel is correctly
>> labeled as i686, its just the name of the distro that remained i386.
>
> That's why I'm asking whether or not it would make more sense to rename
> the distro to i686 instead. It might make perfect sense in a very
> colloquial way but from a technical point of view i386 suggests 32-bit
> 80386 compatibility. Either way, it's just a suggestion and general
> wondering since I wasn't aware of what i386 had become in the US.

It actually makes more sense to call the distro x86, better to peg it
to a particular architecture then a CPU release.

Then one has x86 (32-bit) and x86_64 (64-bit).

But this is all decided by Redhat, CentOS is just a RHEL recompilation
with the intellectual property stripped out.

-Ross



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