How do you determine which ISO to choose, specifically, amd64 or i686?

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Connochaetes

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A rejoint: 12/13/2017

Typing lshw -C cpu in a terminal gives "width: 64 bits" and "capabilities: x86-64 […]".

Typing uname -m or arch gives "x86_64".

Typing cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep flags gives, among many other flags, "[…] lm […]".

Does all this mean that I should use the ISOs marked "amd64"? And had the output been just "x86" instead of "x86_64", then I should have used the ISOs marked "i686" instead? Is this documented on Trisquel's website? It seems to take some searching to find out which output corresponds to which choice of ISO, so a searchable page with a kind of flowchart in Trisquel's wiki, perhaps complemented by a link to it from a readme file among the download options, would be a great help in this very first step (well, right after getting some hardware) towards using Trisquel.

Note I've just copied snippets of what has been discussed in the closed discussion at https://trisquel.info/de/forum/there-simple-command-find-out-your-architecture, it's not like I know what I'm doing here.

nadebula.1984
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A rejoint: 05/01/2018

The last mainstream 32-bit processors were Intel Core Solo/Duo series (Yonah), which are already 14 years old by now (2020). Unless you are using an even older computer, just download the 64-bit image.

Therefore I don't find such a searchable page necessary.

Connochaetes

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A rejoint: 12/13/2017

Thank you!

>Therefore I don't find such a searchable page necessary.

But see, I didn't know what you know. It's not universal knowledge that "i686" means "32-bit processors" and that these are near obsolete. Having guidance such as "If your computer is from 2007 or newer, just download the 64-bit image" in a readme near the ISOs or in the wiki would save many people time, methinks.

Connochaetes

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A rejoint: 12/13/2017

>Having guidance such as "If your computer is from 2007 or newer, just download the 64-bit image" in a readme near the ISOs or in the wiki would save many people time

Actually, instead of "the 64-bit image", a wording such as "the files with 'amd64' in the filename" would be even better, with a few sentences (or a link to a page) explaining the difference between Trisquel, Triskel, Trisquel Mini and Trisquel Sugar.

You could argue these are not final releases so not intended for users who don't already know such things, but I don't think there has been much in the way of guidance with final releases, either, so I wouldn't expect it to be any better with this version. I'd like to be able to point people who'd like to try Trisquel to one page on this website which will then guide them further. Like which ISO file to download, what to do with it once it's been downloaded, etc.

nadebula.1984
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A rejoint: 05/01/2018

i686-compatible processors were first introduced in 1995 (Pentium Pro) and became mainstream since 1997 (Pentium II). In other words, most mainstream processors manufactured in recent 23 years are i686 compatible. But even if a legacy system with a non-i686 processor (be it i386, i486 or i586) still works, its chipset probably doesn't support enough memory to run current GNU/Linux distributions.

So in my opinion, one sentence is more than enough: If your computer is built in 2007 or later, the amd64 image is recommended, otherwise please use the i686 image.

Connochaetes

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A rejoint: 12/13/2017

>So in my opinion, one sentence is more than enough: If your computer is built in 2007 or later, the amd64 image is recommended, otherwise please use the i686 image.

I don't see why you think it's *more than* enough – for me, it would have been perfect, any less would be worse. Having had that sentence would have saved me (and you, for answering me) more time than it would have taken away from people to write and read it.
Thank you for helping me.

Magic Banana

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A rejoint: 07/24/2010

All the output you show say "64-bit"... but they would not all say so if you were running a 32-bit operating system on a 64-bit processor (that works, at least for x86; the other way around does not): lshw, cat /proc/cpuinfo (and 'lscpu', that provides a far simpler output) inform about the hardware; uname and arch inform about the operating system.