Re: Sarge, kernel-image, and i586
Matt Zimmerman wrote:
>On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 02:56:15PM -0500, Adam Majer wrote:
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>>There is no more 586 kernel though. Not even the regular one. The 386
>>version is quite slower on a Pentium MMX than an optimized one.
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>Have you measured this?
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With my stop watch. Really. KDE was at least twice as slow with a 386
kernel than a 586mmx kernel. There is a *huge* performance penalty if
one is running a 386 kernel. I have tried this on a Pentium 200 MMX with
196MB. With slow machines like this, the difference between a 386 and
586 can be seconds to start things like terminal or Konqueror. It is
actually more than a minute booting up. The system is essentially
unusable with a 386 kernel, but it is still running at a steady pace
under a 586mmx kernel.
With a 386 kernel, artsd cannot play sound and displays a message that
"CPU is overloaded". 586mmx kernel runs artsd easily, not even using
that much CPU time.
During initial user setup for KDE, KDE set the speed of the box to on
the slow end of the performance bar (second setting from the slowest).
When under a 586 kernel, KDE detected the box right in the middle
between the Slowest setting and Fastest setting.
The boot time is cut in half when comparing the two kernels.
I'm not complaining that there is no 2.6.x 586 or 586-mmx kernels since
I can just rebuild one. But there is a huge performance loss running a
386 kernel on anything else than a 386 or maybe a 486 (but I haven't
tried a 486).
- Adam
PS. This is my comparison with a 586mmx kernel. I don't know what the
difference is between 586 classic and 486 kernels.
--
Building your applications one byte at a time
http://www.galacticasoftware.com
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