I will write a few questions here, and hope the answers are filled in

. Why is the version for my Intel multicore machine called net-linux-amd64-smp ? Its not an AMD machine.

The 64 bit standard implemented by both AMD and Intel was invented by AMD and later adopted by Intel. So your intel multicore machine is in fact also an AMD64 machine. But intel chooses not to advertise this fact. The latest politically correct moniker is "x86_64", a name which is both annoying to type and to say, so inertia has kept amd64 as the descriptor. net-linux-x86_64-smp is not much of an improvement, but x86_64 is the more widely used label in the linux community.

. When I build this (net-linux-smp) version for my single node (standalone) multicore desktop (which I have to do to use liveViz: it needs charmrun, and charmrun is not available in plain multicore version) and try an hello program, I get something about RSH not found. To run the net version on one node (but in net mode, so I can use liveViz etc.) what exactly should I have to do? (.nodelist mods, .ssh/authorized_keys modes?)

One way is: cd ~/.ssh (create this directory if not there) ; ssh-keygen -t rsa (specify empty pass phrase, and accept default filenames) cat id_rsa.pub >> authorized_keys