does G4 (altivec) speed up linux?

[mushis@mail.lafayette.edu]

Hi again,

After some help I got from you guys I am now a happy camper .. runing 
Woody on my Beige M/T G3-400, 512Mb Ram, but I noticed that the mouse 
movement is not smooth and applicaton load operations are sluggish. Is 
there a way I can optimize this e.g. better drivers for my graphics board 
(which has 6Mb Vram), turning off some background services.

And finally are there any applications on linux that will take advantage of the 
altivec if I decided to go out and upgrade my g3 to g4 -zif.

Thanks