Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo's advantage: "optimized for your system" -- huh?

[kashani]

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