That reminds me (tangentially) ... does gentoo optimise for hppa? How about risc? What about an ultrasparc (something I actually do own) ?? IOW, optimising for x86 addresses a subset of debian's userbase. I'll grant that it's a very large subset, but a subset nevertheless.
The optimise flags in Gentoo are really just variables you set that are passed to gcc and configure when it compiles the sources out of portage. So if gcc can optimise for ultrasparc or risc, Gentoo should be able to as well. For example, I have the following USE flags set: cdr dga samba jpeg png 3dnow mmx mpeg quicktime truetype xv x86 -alsa The above determine how apps configure for compiling. I don't use ALSA, so nothing on my system compiles with ALSA support. My CFLAGS are: -march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe The above are directly passed through to gcc. The man page for gcc has the full list of options you can pass through to it. -Mark