On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:25 PM, Frans Pop
<elendil@planet.nl> wrote:
On Wednesday 16 September 2009, Maximilian Haeussler wrote:
> > Please read the installation guide before you are doing installation.
> > [1]
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual
>
> No. It is the other way round: One has to SELECT your architecture to
> read an installation guide. Users who do not know their architecture do
> not know which installation guide they should read. They will definitely
> look into AMD if they bought Intel. This architecture problem is bugging
> me since the introduction of IA64.
the architecture table
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s01.html.en#id2756248
and in the section on CPU support just below that:
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s01.html.en#id2756691
- The architecture table does not say what EM64T is though being the first and only document that someone who is installing debian will consult.
The architecture table should mention that AMD64 is the currently most common form of processor. Something along the lines: "When in doubt..." / "You probably want..." / "If you don't know what to select here, please read ... ") ("if you have a non-Itanium processor..."
- The section on CPU support does not say that all new Intel desktop processors are EM64T. It does not explain EM64T.
- But: There is whole PARAGRAPH + a FOOTNOTE on stupid 386 processors that really no one cares about since 10 years!
>However, Debian GNU/Linux lenny will not run on 386 or earlier processors. Despite the architecture name "i386", support for actual 80386 >processors (and their clones) was dropped with the Sarge (r3.1) release of Debian[]. (No version of Linux has ever supported the 286 or earlier >chips in the series.)
I've just added an explicit caution in the version for IA64.
Thanks for the caution. It seems that this caution used to be there some time ago already from what I can see from the forum discussions.
I think a similar caution would be also important on other pages:
A simple use case:
You click on "Getting Debian".
You think "Easy!".
You click "Download an image".
Bump. You're stuck.
No mentions of what to select then.
No link to an explanation of the different architectures.
cheers
Max