From: realnc@arcor.de   
      
   Aragorn wrote:   
   > Nikos Chantziaras wrote:   
   >   
   >> ben.kevan@gmail.com wrote:   
   >>   
   >>> Can you give a little more of a rundown of how it was done. What   
   >>> version of GCC were you running (meaning compiled from source or from   
   >>> a opensuse repo)..   
   >>> I may have to try this on a test machine before I do it on my   
   >>> production machine, but man.. sounds good.   
   >> Uhm, the above is on a Gentoo box.  I mentioned openSUSE because that's   
   >> my main system, and now it seems slow compared to Gentoo.   
   >>   
   >> I never compiled openSUSE from source; that's just too hairy to do.   
   >   
   > Binary distribution kernels and libraries - the most important one   
   > being /glibc/ - are typically compiled for generic architectures - the same   
   > is true for everything in the system, actually, but the kernel and /glibc/   
   > have the biggest footprint on the performance curve.   
   >   
   > Even with /x86_64,/ they make use of generic "optimizations" that will run   
   > equally well - or equally poor, depending on how you value it - on AMD and   
   > Intel.   
      
   Although that's true (and makes sense), the biggest speed-ups I have are   
   with X11/KDE.  I could be wrong, but I think the LDFLAGS play the major   
   role here.  `ldd` reports much less linked-to libraries on Gentoo (I use   
   -O1 as well as --as-needed).  The speed difference of the apps   
   themselves isn't that dramatic (though they *are* a bit faster, like   
   Konqueror displaying complex pages somewhat faster), but their loading   
   time is really decreased a lot; Konqeueror pops-up instantly on Gentoo,   
   but needs about 2 seconds on openSUSE (both have the "Preload an   
   instance of Konqueror" disabled in the control center).   
      
   Now one might argue if those 2 seconds are worth the trouble.  Well,   
   call me a geek, but they are for me :P  The grin on my face when a   
   friend boots the system and is presented with a full eye-candy KDE   
   desktop in no-time is priceless :)   
      
   RAM requirements are also nice; due to Gentoo's way of handling   
   dependencies, I don't have to drag-in all the useless stuff I don't   
   need.  For example, on Gentoo I have about 15MB RAM usage on fresh boot   
   without X11, while on openSUSE it's about 70MB.  With KDE fired up for   
   the first time, my Gentoo setup uses about 80MB, while it's 150+ on   
   openSUSE.  But with 2GB RAM in my case, and today's machines in general   
   this isn't really a problem, so this is probably not a strong argument.   
     Still, I think it's very nice to only have stuff you actually need   
   instead of stuff the dependencies need.   
      
   Now I'm not bashing openSUSE here!  It's a very nice distro (the best   
   binary distro for Desktops IMHO; I run away screaming when seeing   
   Ubuntu).  But I start to like Gentoo a lot and I use it more and more often.   
      
      
   > Gentoo is a source-based distribution and will thus most of the time be   
   > compiled for your specific hardware, unless you stick to the pre-compiled   
   > binary packages, which is what a lot of n00bs do - that way, they can brag   
   > about running Gentoo without having to get their hands dirty    
      
   Not much point in running Gentoo at all in this case :P  But still, it   
   makes a *bit* of sense due to "emerge"; that's a hell of a tool to have.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)