Choosing right Distrubtion and architecture for school

[9100107]

Dear Gentoo,

Hi! My name is Jackson Peebles, and my school is planning to switch over to Linux. I am not sure what distribution they are getting, but the tech coordinator has told me that any Linux will do. So I researched for a while, and decided on Gentoo! The problem is, I cannot decide what distribution of Gentoo I should use! It gives me these options:

alpha amd64 ppc (32 bit) ppc (64 bit) sparc64 x86

Assuming that these are for different processors, I can probably rule out the AMD one and the 64 bit one. I would like to dual boot on one hard drive. I have to keep Microsoft Windows XP. However, I still don’t know which one to use, and I was wondering if you could please tell me what would be appropriate for this hardware:

-Windows XP

-Pentium 4 Processor 530J with Hyper Threading (3.00GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 800MHz Front Side Bus)

-1 GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM Memory

-160 GB Primary Internal Hard Drive

-40 GB Backup Internal Hard Drive

-160 GB Primary External Hard Drive

-Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 With 128MB Shared Memory

Please help me decide quickly, since I can only download them on a fast internet connection, which I will only have access to for two days.

Thank you,

Jackson Scott Peebles

[dgaffuri]

x86
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[9100107]

[BlackEdder]

[coriolan]

A second opinion! How many do you need. You have a Pentium 4; x86 it is.

[lghman]

[9100107]

Thank you to everyone who responded to my requests for help with the version distributions. However, I have one more question...
Can I run Gentoo on a seperate external hard drive? Western Digital 160 GB...
I need very detailed advice on how this will work and how to boot from an external, I'm not very smart.
Thank you,
Jackson Peebles

[borden_hawk]

What type of external hard drive is it? USB, firewire, etc...

[phsdv]

[Diezel]

I don't mean to be mean or anything here but if you already ran in to troubles choosing the architecture for you computer you might be better of with something like Suse,Ubunthu or Fedora. Those might be a little easier to get into in the begining.
I would also like to know why you chose Gentoo? It's a great distro, but it might be hard for someone with little or no exprience of Linux. So to get a better first impression one of the above might be better. Ofcourse it's your choice.
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[enderandrew]

x86 is the only install that will work on a Pentium 4. The other distributions are for completely different hardware, such as the IBM PowerPC processors, etc.

Honestly, if you're not that familiar with hardware architecture, then perhaps Gentoo isn't the best distro for you. One of the big advantages of Gentoo is making custom builds from source customized to your architecture.

For a large number of computers, such as a school, I'd go with a distro that is easier/quicker to install and maintain. If you just want something fast, Arch Linux and Damn Small Linux will also help.

If you do decide to go with Gentoo, do plenty of reading up first.
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[amne]

Please don't take it personal, but someone who spells the topic in ALL CAPS (except one because the forum won't let you post otherwise) and appearently has no idea about computer architectures and Linux in general should really not be the one deciding which Linux distribution to get. Just listen to what your tech department suggests and knows best.

PS: merged your other thread and fixed topic.
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[Axxium]

Is this a serious post? Wow! Stay away from computers all together man!