On 07/23/11 18:24, Alan McKinnon wrote: > On Saturday 23 July 2011 16:11:20 Mick did opine thusly: >>> So, if I choose the amd64 iso and Stage 3, it doesn't have to be >>> on an AMD machine? >> Correct, you will use this iso (or systemrescueCD or Knoppix) and a >> Staqe 3 equivalent to build a system on an Intel 64bit CPU. > Just to flesh it out a bit more: > > The name amd64 came about because it's the 64 bit instruction set that > AMD designed for their 64-bit chips. There was an earlier 64 bit cpu > from Intel, but we don't talk about it anymore (and it has nothing to > do with this topic). > > Anyway, the name is a nod to the company that designed it, and has > nothing to do with the manufacturer of your CPU. Intel later had to > eat humble pie and implement AMD's design just to stay relevant in the > market, that's why 64 bit Intel chips run on an architecture that > Gentoo calls amd64. > > The 32 bit design is called x86 because that was the general name in > use for 20+ years prior. Most other distros call the amd64 design by > the name x86_64 or similar, Gentoo is the most visible exception.
Thanks for this, Alan! And thanks to all for the responses. Honestly, I wasn't so much worried about the hardware breaking. I took the leap and wiped Windows off my laptop and never had any issues. But I've never dealt with 64-bit stuff and I wanted to make sure that I made the right choices. Thanks to the feedback from this list, I am confident that I can. If I run into any problems, this will be the first place I turn! :-) Warranty is not a super huge issue. The computer I got was a super good deal - it came with 1 year warranty, but I never purchased extended warranty. And to be honest, I've had a total of 4 Dell computers and never had any hardware issues at all (touch wood!). My laptop is 4 years old and I've reinstalled Gentoo on it about 3 times - the original install, once because I screwed up the MBR when I hit the "media" button instead of the power button and then recently when I kept getting blocks for KDE packages and KDE had gone to KDE SC. Thanks, again! :-) Colleen -- Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org
