[ale] Slackware user list?

[Chris Ricker]

On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, Jeff Walters wrote:

> I'd like to ask for some brief non-flame distro advice on Debian
> vs. Slackware. 

The best advice is just to try 'em both and see which you prefer.  All it'll
cost you is time ;-)

> Can someone correct my impressions on this?  Does either Debian or
> Slackware compile for i586?

AFAIK, no.  I've seen Debian developers talk about it on the various
development lists, but it's never really gotten anywhere because the reality
is that recompiling specifically for more advanced Intel chips is more hype
than anything else; in most cases, it doesn't really gain you much, if
anything, in end-user speed, and it means you no longer can run on i386 /
i486 (at least w/o the complication of having two different product
distributions for the two, since some i586 / i686 - specific optimizations
aren't backwards-compatible).  Mandrake just needs something to distinguish
themselves from RH, and they can hardly advertise "we've shipped more broken
compilers than anyone else in the Linux industry," now can they, so i586
optimization is it ;-).

FWIW (I think I can say this w/o violating NDA), RH did try doing
chip-specific compilations of all their packages for the upcoming release
that's currently in beta, and what they found is that it only made
measurable speed differences for two or three packages; what they're doing
when the release ships is compiling most software for i386, and those few
packages where it matters for i386, i586, and i686, and then the installer
will choose the fastest of the three for your particular hardware....

later,
chris

-- 
Chris Ricker                                               kaboom at gatech.edu
                                              chris.ricker at genetics.utah.edu

--
To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.