[svlug] [Volunteers] Question for the next Linux Conference on Oct, 15th.

[James Sparenberg]

On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 14:04 -0500, Chris Verges wrote:
> Joseph Liou wrote:
> 
> > I am a college student who is trying to install Linux on my system to
> > instead of Win32. 
> 
> Hey Joseph,
> 
> The webmaster alias is probably the wrong one to use for this question.
> You should look into the svlug at svlug.org mailing list, which is used for
> more general purpose discussions.
> 
> However, in answer to your question as to whether or not the VIA
> processors are supported under Linux, I believe they are x86 compatible,
> so you should have no problems running standard x86 distributions on
> your laptop. I would suggest looking into either Knoppix or Fedora Core
> 4, however, as a test. If either of those work, then you should be good
> to go.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Chris Verges


The only problem I've ever seen/heard of was about 3 years ago.   Early
on the Via CPU's where getting detected as i686 when what they really
are is i586 with a lot of i486 instructions.   (go figure)  So the i686
compile kernel would throw them into a kernel panic upon first boot from
HDD.  However if you distro is less than a year old.  .... it should
work without a hitch.  

James (who risks the wrath of God since his wife has a Via CPU desktop)