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
