[ale] Which Distro should I use?

[msmith at mikeandmel.com]

Doesn't redhat also provide rpm'd kernels compiled for
the Athlon....  I see them on the site and have pulled
them down since I am running an athlon..

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003 09:30:26 -0800 (PST), Chris Ricker
wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Michael D. Hirsch wrote:
> 
> > On Thursday 30 January 2003 09:13 am,
> ChangingLINKS.com wrote:
> > > 1. Is Gentoo "faster?"
> > 
> > Yes.  All packages get compiled for your specific
> hardware with as much 
> > speed optimization as possible.  You will see more
> speed-ups on a p4 than 
> > on a 486.
> 
> Does Gentoo or anybody else hyping the "compiled for
> your hardware" marketing
> fluff actually have benchmarks showing speed
increases?
> I'm curious b/c
> I know both Caldera^WSCO and Red Hat have done
internal
> tree builds optimized
> for the exact CPU and found that in most cases it
makes
> no difference.
> Debian's currently in the process of rebuilding all of
> Sid compiled with
> i686 optimization to see whether its worth doing, but
> it'll be a few weeks
> before those results are available....
> 
> I'd be kinda surprised if it actually makes a
> difference for most packages;
> gcc is fairly sucky at optimizing for specific
> chipsets....
> 
> > RH is compiled for a 486, so it doesn't take
> advantage of many 
> > possible optimizations.
> 
> Wrong. Overall, Red Hat is compiled with i686 ordering
> optimization, but
> using only i386+ compatible instructions. If you're
> familiar with gcc target
> specification, Red Hat is compiled with:
> 
> gcc -mcpu=i686 -march=i386
> 
> so it runs optimally on i686, but still will execute
on
> 386, 486, 586, K6-2,
> Cyrix, Athlon, etc. cpus.
> 
> For a few packages where benchmarking shows a marked
> difference
> (glibc, kernel, etc.), the Red Hat packages are
> compiled with both mcpu and
> march set to specific machines (i686, athlon, i586,
> etc.) and the installer
> and associated tools install the machine-specific
> version of the package.
> 
> Most other distros work similarly. I don't think
> anyone, other than
> possibly Slackware, optimizes for i386 any more, and
> certainly no one ships
> a 486-optimized distro.
> 
> later,
> chris
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Michael Smith
AIM: MikAtlanta
MSN: MikeAshtonSmith
email: msmith at mikeandmel.com
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