Difference between i386 and i686 Linux distros

[michel]

What is the difference between i386 and i686 distros?
Does Red Hat come in a i686 distro?

[Curt]

The basic difference is code optimization. The i505 distro is optimized for P4 and similar where as i386 is for the Intel 386. Intel i386 will run on p4 but i686 will run more efficiently. I run red hat 9.0 on one of my workstations and it installed the i686 kernel. However, I believe that if I install it on a 386, it would automatically use the 386 kernel.

if your distro only installs a 386 kernel you can build a new kernel for the 686 – P4.

[michel]

To make it easy for distribution, companies just say that the i386 distros are for Intel Pentium class processors. Instead of having separate distros for the i386 and i686. When you fine tuning of your kernel during the install, you have the option to set the processor to the type you have.