Re: [gentoo-user] A tale of computing thud and blunder

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

Walter Dnes wrote:
> It's probably the sum total of the effect of all the flags. I've 
> renamed the thread, to be more accurate. Here's how things went... * 
> right after the install (presumably with generic i686 code) the PC 
> could not handle streaming 1080i video from my HDHomerun TV tuner * I 
> misinterpreted output from gcc diagnostics, and concluded that 
> "march=-native" left several flags disabled that shouldn't be * acting 
> on that (mis)information), I emerged system+world+kernel and found 
> that not only could my system handle 1080i, it could handle a 1080p 
> Youtube clip without problems, after a lot of buffering. My 5 megabit 
> ADSL connection was the limiting factor there. It's supposed to be 
> upgraded to 6 megabits one of these days, for some minor improvement. 
> * I mistakenly thought that it was the additional flags in CFLAGS 
> during the emerge system+world that boosted the video. Actually, the 
> emerge would've done the trick. The lesson from this is that, before 
> doing any benchmarking or heavy-duty usage, one should emerge 
> system+world, to replace the generic code from the install CD with 
> fully optimized code. It's easiest to so right after the initial 
> install, so that there are as few packages to emerge as possible. 


That is good advice too.  When I do a install, I unpack the tarball and 
do the normal things and get my make.conf settings done.  Since there is 
very little installed anyway, I do a emerge -ev world.  It usually takes 
only a hour or so depending on the speed of the rig.  Thing is, you then 
have everything compiled with your settings and not the generic ones the 
tarball had.  It also updates anything that needs it too.  Even before 
amd64 came along I did it this way.  Lots of people use Intel CPUs but I 
use AMD.  I don't know what the person that made the tarball uses but 
either way, he has to make it generic so that it will run on ANY CPU.

I wonder if they should mention this in the docs?  It seemed to have 
made a difference in your case for sure.  You went from not being able 
to play a video to being able to play a HD video.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"