[plug] Optimized Distro

[Leon Brooks]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 11:53, Weirdo wrote:
> I have just compiled my kernel, optimized for my Celeron 466 on a
> Debian r0 system. I know that Debian packages are compiled so that
> they will run on a 386 up. I like the Gentoo approach of compiling
> every thing so that it is optimized.

IRL, this only buys you a few percent improvement for an enormous amount 
of effort.

Mandrake's approach is to optimize for the basic Pentium, which buys you 
most of those few percent across the board, then provide a (very) few 
686-optimised components (kernel-enterprise, GLIBC) which get you back 
most of the change. They found that some optimised aplications ran 
*slower* even on the advanced processors because some of the 
optimisations are tradeoffs and the tradeoffs didn't always work.

I'd suggest that you take a similar approach, not taking an optimisation 
unless it had a clear benefit, and only rebuilding applications that 
are math-heavy (MP3 players, raytracers etc), a few key pieces like the 
kernel and core libraries, and anything that constantly hogs CPU (artsd 
and the like).

Cheers; Leon