<geek>
0.
i386 is the 32bit version
amd64 is the 64bit AMD64 and x86_64 version, amd64 and x86_64 are usually interchangeable.
The 64bit version is faster than the 32bit on all AMD64s and I believe all non-P4 64bit Intel CPUs. On P4s with 64bit support 64bit is actually
slower.
The amd64 version can run both 32bit and 64bit software. 64bit will run faster than 32bit, 32bit will run as fast as it normally would on all platforms with proper 64bit support.
If you are going to run on an AMD64 CPU or an Intel Core* then you are better off running 64bit and installing both the 32bit and 64bit libraries.
Some proprietary software only comes in 32bit versions, this includes flash player and most windows codecs so you will need a 32bit firefox and media player software with support for 32bit codecs.
0.5 "Direct Desktop Download" is the ISO CD image that you can burn to CD to install from.
"Direct Desktop md5sum Download" is the md5 checksum used to verify your ISO was not corrupted during the download and that it is the genuine ISO and not an altered one.
The md5sum does not actually contain the ISO just the checksum.
Normally you would download both the ISO and the md5 and sha1 checksums and the accompanying PGP/GPG signature file.
Some distributions make the md5, sha1 checksums available along with the signature for better security.
Checking the sums and the signatures only takes a few seconds on Unix / cygwin and is a very good idea.
To check the md5sum / sha1sum and signature if one is available on Unix systems you would run:
Code:
md5sum filename.iso
sha1sum filename.iso
# missing step download and import the PGP/GPG key following the instructions provided by the distribution
gpg --verify filename.sig filename.iso
On windows
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/using_md5sums.html the firefox plugin may not work with the new versions of firefox also you can use cygwin on windows to install the open source md5sum, sha1sum and gpg.
1. If I am not mistaken Ubuntu uses Gnome, Xubuntu XFCE and Kubuntu KDE.
http://www.gnome.org/
http://www.xfce.org/
http://www.kde.org/
These are different GUIs / desktop environments for Linux. Linux is all about choice and there are others as well so you can customize your system to death if you are so inclined. http://xwinman.org/ has some neat examples of what you could use.
On Redhat and Redhat like distributions you can easily install all 3 at the same time and they will coexist peacefully. Ubuntu decided to split them up although you can still run Gnome apps on KDE and KDE apps on Gnome, etc.
GL
</geek>