Installing Linux

Hello , am interested in installing Linux on my laptop for a course project and am wondering if someone can help me here am supposed to install version 2.6.18 i386 but i have an AMD processor would it work or does it have 2 be intel ?!
Thanks

Most distros have an AMD version. The i386 "should" work but there are no guarantees.

the numbers 2.6.18 refer to the kernal, it would help if you could give us more info.. Installing linux on a laptop isn't often a pleasant experience, and not without some risk of making a mistake leading to a costly situation.

Check hardware compatability, and look at different linux versions. You will need precise details about your hardware.. things like graphics hardware, sound hardware.. wireless networking hardware (always a really big bugbear) and how the hdd is set up. If it uses a system partition with bios settings, drivers etc. I'd leave it well alone and find another machine for experimenting.

please take heed.. I have seen a LOT of bricked laptops which have cost a small fortune to repair from a slip with a linux formatting tool during an install.

contrary to jan, i haven't seen such disasterous occurrences with any of my friends' laptops. the 2.6.18 i386 kernel is generally compiled to work with all processors unless its a gentoo based distro. in that case the kernel is generally compiled for a more specific type of processor so that it can "run faster". i would recommend trying out a major distro, such as ubuntu. reason being, graphics drivers work by default and with the most recent version, 7.04, wireless drivers work with very little configuration (telling it your router name & wep key :] ). the biggest concern remaining would be the partitioning scheme. you can run ubuntu as a livecd and install it from there, but you're going to want to make sure you have space on your hard drive and that you have all of your necessary information backed up before you start slicing and dicing it into more partitions :]