Re: Optimizing Debian

[Pigeon <jah.pigeon@ukonline.co.uk>]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 08:41:22PM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 06:09:30PM +0100, javier wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I am a new Debian user. I used to work in Mandrake and there the x86 
> > packages are compiled for i586, while in Debian they are compiled for 
> > i386. From my experience, I know you can improve the performance 
> > recompiling the kernel for your particular machine architecture, but I 
> > am not sure about how much you will improve the overall performace 
> > recompiling also some of the packages (as for example glibc).
> 
> Gain is actually epsilon except on multimedia heavy applications and
> the kernel itself.  Such packages have processor-feature specific
> versions.  You can also apt-get -b build-dep <package> and apt-get -b
> source <package> if you *really* want to compile by hand.
> Alterantively, you can try Gentoo instead.
> 
> In the end, compiling by hand will waste a few hours to save a few
> microseconds.  What would you rather have the developers doing?
> Making packages for every CPU sub-arch on the planet, or actually
> fixing bugs?  What would you rather spend *your* time doing?  Using
> your system or compiling packages?
> 
> The cost/benefit ratio is too low to matter in this.

Well, this is personal judgment really. The best thing is to compare a
generic binary with an optimised build of the same package from
source, on the packages you use most.

I tend to compile a lot, because I've got slink and a lot of binaries
won't run on it these days. Compiling doesn't take more than a few minutes
for most things - X, being ginormous, is the exception. That's on a
600MHz Celeron with 384Mb RAM, which is a bit slow these days.

I'd say, try it and see.

Pigeon