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On Mar 14, 2013 4:14 PM, "William Kenworthy" <billk@×××××××××.au> wrote: |
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> |
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> Did this few years back for an online magazine sponsored by a local |
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> linux sysadmin company who wanted to see the difference between generic |
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> debian and optimised (not necessarily gentoo, but thats what I used.) |
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> |
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> Difference in times was ~10% across the board for graphics manipulations |
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> (gimp scripts), spreadsheet tasks (gnumeric) and the like. |
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> |
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> The "kicker" - simple optimisations gained far, far more than generic |
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> compiler settings. e.g., initially, the gnumeric versions were slightly |
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> different, with some wild times across the tasks. Make em the same |
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> version (and cuedos to the gnumeric maintainer for jumping in and |
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> helping diagnose/fix the problem - newer version on gentoo was heaps |
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> slower :) and there was little difference. |
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> |
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> Shared libs like glibc didnt make a huge difference, but being smart |
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> about how/what a "particular" task was handled gained more. If a debian |
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> app was compiled with similar options as to gentoo, little difference |
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> between them in performance which considering shared libs etc wasn't |
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> what I expected. |
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> |
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> The intel compilers are/were said to be a lot better than gcc, not sure |
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> if the gap is still there (supposedly 20% better again) |
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> |
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> Its how long is a piece of string kind of question if considered OS |
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> wide, but pick a narrow task and optimise away with smart programmers |
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> and you will do well on almost anything. |
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> |
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> Big advantage of gentoo - configurability, version control (what version |
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> is installed and changing it at short notice) and general flexibility. |
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> |
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This. |
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Why I prefer Gentoo over other distros: Full control. |
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I mean, I can (and do) leverage "-march=native". And I certainly have an |
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overly long USE flags... but it's the sheet satisfaction of knowing that my |
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system is MY system that made me stick with Gentoo... |
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It's eminently satisfying -- a geekgasm, if you will -- to know that one's |
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kernel is lean and customized, all the toolchains have been tuned, and |
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there are no useless things being installed... |
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In regards to performance, the benefits might not be groundbreaking, but |
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it's there, and when your server is being relentlessly hammered by |
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requests, Gentoo seems to have additional breathing space where other |
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distros choke... |
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Rgds, |
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-- |
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