[Wolves] i586/i686 the difference is?

[Peter Evans]

Ok,

I'm new to Linux and still very much learning (lurching?) my way around, so 
please bear with me if I'm asking about the blindingly obvious.

One thing that has confused me a little is the actual difference between the 
i586 and i686 flavours of binaries that are out there.  I'm currently running 
SuSE 9.1 on an old Pentium III laptop.  When I fire up the KDE control centre 
it confidently tells me the machine is i686.  But when I look on kde.org they 
only have binary downloads for i586 for KDE 3.2.3 and I have to ask myself 
what the difference is and if I download and install the i586 stuff on my 
i686 installation what will be the effect, if any?

A recent irritation is that when logging onto my user account all of my 
desktop icons are sitting in a little cluster on top of each other in the top 
left of the screen.  Yes, I've been fiddling with themes, icon sets and even 
fonts, but if anyone can tell me how to fix this or even tell me why it's 
happening I'd be grateful.

Thanks in advance.

Pete Evans.