Re: A ? for all you old time linux users

[Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>]

Edward Guldemond <thedebategod@yifan.net> writes:

> It's feasible, and if you recompile from Debian sources, you can meet
> all of the dependencies.  There's only one problem though:  most
> packages are compiled with (reasonably) sane optimizations.  There won't
> be many performance gains.  If I had to recompile four parts of my
> system from source, they would be, in this order:
>
> 1.  glibc, because it is THE library that all programs rely on

For a while (since version 2.2.2-3), Debian's glibc was compiled with no
optimizations at all.  Is this still true?

> 2.  gcc, because it might speed up compiles
> 3.  kernel, because a correctly tweaked kernel is a thing of beauty
> 4.  XFree86, because I had to include a fourth (X takes FOREVER to
>     build)
>
> Even then I'm not sure that you'd get many performance gains.  Remember
> Knuth:  "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."

That statement refers to the actual writing of code.  Turning on
compiler optimizations really doesn't have the same effect.

-- 
People said I was dumb, but I proved them!