Re: pros/cons of installing from source
On Friday 04 May 2007 05:36, Greg Folkert wrote:
> like encoders and decoders. Along with the entire
Going to be very machine specific... one of the biggest groans against GCC is
that is supports so many target platforms but doesn't do any of them
particularly well. Intel's compiler generates very "quick" code but IIRC only
targets their processors.
Encoders and decoders, and things like emulators that use image scaling,
generally contain code to take advantage of processor specific features at
run time. For example if you build mplayer correctly it will detect and
utilise the correct SIMD extensions for your hardware at runtime.
> emerge is very simple tool to use, especially if you just hunker down
> and use it. Selecting the right architecture and listings (I used
> "current" snapshots) is a big factor. I had everything up and running as
> soon as it stopped compiling and installing.
I reckon if we did the maths.. most "ricers" spend more time compiling stuff
than the time they save by their system being subjectively "faster".
The only platform I've ever seen a real benefit from compiling everything with
arch specific GCC flags is the 32bit SPARCs. Old SPARCs didn't have a
hardware multiply or divide (I forget which) so GCC built code that didn't
use it even on SPARCs that had the instruction. There again switching from a
Linux based system to NetBSD on that hardware increased real world
performance by a big big margin without it rumbling away for days building
single large packages like perl.
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