On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 08:41:22PM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote: > On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 06:09:30PM +0100, javier wrote: > > Hi, > > I am a new Debian user. I used to work in Mandrake and there the x86 > > packages are compiled for i586, while in Debian they are compiled for > > i386. From my experience, I know you can improve the performance > > recompiling the kernel for your particular machine architecture, but I > > am not sure about how much you will improve the overall performace > > recompiling also some of the packages (as for example glibc). > > Gain is actually epsilon except on multimedia heavy applications and > the kernel itself. Such packages have processor-feature specific > versions. You can also apt-get -b build-dep <package> and apt-get -b > source <package> if you *really* want to compile by hand. > Alterantively, you can try Gentoo instead. > > In the end, compiling by hand will waste a few hours to save a few > microseconds. What would you rather have the developers doing? > Making packages for every CPU sub-arch on the planet, or actually > fixing bugs? What would you rather spend *your* time doing? Using > your system or compiling packages? > > The cost/benefit ratio is too low to matter in this.
Well, this is personal judgment really. The best thing is to compare a generic binary with an optimised build of the same package from source, on the packages you use most. I tend to compile a lot, because I've got slink and a lot of binaries won't run on it these days. Compiling doesn't take more than a few minutes for most things - X, being ginormous, is the exception. That's on a 600MHz Celeron with 384Mb RAM, which is a bit slow these days. I'd say, try it and see. Pigeon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
