On Friday July 4 2003 03:52 am, Huw Blackwell wrote:
> >Why do you wanna compile kdelibs from src anyhow?
> To optimize linux for my processor (athlon tbird). I'm also
> trying to install the least amount of software for my
> requirements, optimize the kernel and stopp all unessecary
> services from running. Mandrake installs a loyt, I assume to
> cover all eventualities (i.e. to be user friendly!) but i'm
> interested to see how quick I can go.
>
> Why bother? So I learn more about the workings of linux. I am
> challenging myself to see what I can learn.
That is a very valid reason. IMO, everyone should compile a
kernel from source sooner or later, if only for the knowledge and
experience gained. OTOH, learning to build rpms from scratch is
probly a better learning experience than just rebuilding src.rpms.
There's many docs and tutorials, but a good place to start is the
RPM-howto. It's on your system if you installed the Documentation
packages during installation.
> As an alternative (business) reason, to build a package
> targetting an alpha processor
>
> What are your thoughts?
Optimization, been there done that. I've done a lot of
rebuilding src.rpms for athlon in the past. People like Texstar,
with help from others, even rebuilt the entire distro (IIRC, 9.0)
for athlon. Those with P4's have done it for that processor.
Civileme did extensive testing for several arch's. Almost without
exception we all found negligible to no performance increase over
Mandrake's default i586. Those compiling for P4's find their system
actually performs slower. That's also what civileme found for
P4'and P3's.
Mandrake has also done a lot optimization testing. They've
concluded that the only libs that benefit are glibc and a few
others. If you look in /lib/i686/ you'll find out which ones. For
those with true 686 processors, Mandrake systems already use these
further optimized packages. Some Mandrake gurus insist also
building the kernel for athlon is a performance improvement. I've
never seen any, other than psychological ;) Some gurus further
increase the compiler options for athlon. Most of them report
little to no improvement and a loss of stability.
Now where you will see an improvement with athlon's is to
overclock 'em. I've run a 1.4g athlon at 1.553g for over two years
now. With my ram also slightly oc'd (135mhz) and timed to cas2,
4-bank interleaving. It won't reliably go much faster, it's only
old pc100 mixed with pc133 ;) The cpu is good up to 1.612g, and
still pass stringent tests. At 1.553g, there's a measurable across
the board system performance increase (except for HDD's), and rock
solid stability thru increased IO and cpu voltages. For the most
part, those using XP's and fast DDR ram timings, already experience
this hardware performance increase without oc'ing. YMMV ;)
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
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Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
