From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([69.77.167.62] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1LUUZO-0003g9-Qg for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:20:42 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 8B5C6E044C; Tue, 3 Feb 2009 23:20:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: from www01.badapple.net (www01.badapple.net [64.79.219.163]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B0BAAE044C for ; Tue, 3 Feb 2009 23:20:39 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [172.21.228.88] (fa0-1-wlan-rtr.corp.yahoo.com [216.145.49.5]) (Authenticated sender: ramin@badapple.net) by www01.badapple.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id B840E150010 for ; Tue, 3 Feb 2009 15:20:36 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <4988D143.8020804@badapple.net> Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:20:35 -0800 From: kashani User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (Windows/20081209) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo's advantage: "optimized for your system" -- huh? References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 63788d7b-ed99-4313-9afc-83d4004f6a1e X-Archives-Hash: 28254e5f01ab78d2172c5251043590d9 Grant Edwards wrote: > Whenever I see a write-up of Gentoo, it's describe as a system > similar to BSD "ports" where you build packages from source. > The main benefit claimed for this approach is that you get > better performance because all executables are optimized for > exactly the right instruction set. > > Where did that bit of apocrypha come from, and why is it > parroted by so many people? IIRC as late as 2001 almost all distros were primarily built for i386 there were definite improvements to be had by moving to i686. For things that do complicated math like Mysql, openssl, etc there were noticeable improvements. Apache likely doesn't benefit at all from anything beyond i686, but things like video encoding/decoding do have code that can take advantage of mmx, sse, etc. Additionally when NTPL hit glibc-2.3 Gentoo was one of the first distros that let you move to a NTPL glibc which practically doubled Mysql performance in our environment. Not instruction based, but most other distros required waiting an additional six months for a release to get this. kashani