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On Monday 18 May 2009 19:59:14 William Hubbs wrote: |
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> On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 07:39:48PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: |
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> > On Monday 18 May 2009 19:12:22 William Hubbs wrote: |
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> > > Another difference is that, since you are compiling everything from |
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> > > source, with the correct CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS settings in make.conf, you |
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> > > can optimize the binaries you produce to take full advantage of your |
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> > > processor, which you can't do on a binary distro since everything is |
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> > > already compiled for you. |
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> > |
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> > Another word: |
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> > |
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> > That's ricing. |
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> > |
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> > Ok, that's two words. You get the idea. |
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> |
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> Actually, I don't, because I don't know what you mean. I was just |
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> pointing out something about gentoo which I think is different from a |
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> binary distribution. I don't know how much of a difference it makes, |
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> but it is a feature they don't have. |
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|
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The cases where one really does need to optimize the compiler for your cpu are |
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very rare, and only really apply to old hardware. Back in the day they |
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performed fine, but code available today tends to do more (keeping pace with |
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cpu capability) so you need to tweak things to extract the best performance. |
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|
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If using current packages on current hardware, the benefit is questionable and |
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users are highly unlikely to notice much difference between good old i686 and |
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-O9. With some apps it does make a difference - extensive floating point ops |
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comes to mind - and one should take advantage of those cases. However, looking |
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into the ebuilds of such packages usually reveals that, if the maintainer is |
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any good, those optimizations are already present in the ebuild. |
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|
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Years ago Gentoo had a problem with fanatical moronic users claiming their |
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machines performed a brazillion time faster with -O9 and other such nonsense. |
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This is called "ricing" - a word play on young Japanese males modifying |
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Subarus for "performance" that actually reduces performance. Ever seen a |
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Subaru with a gigantic whale-tail rear spoiler? That's ricing. These Gentoo |
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users seem to have gone away to wherever the current fashion fad is. For a |
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while they infested Ubuntu. $DEITY only knows where they are now, maybe |
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they're using MacOS and annoying Steve |
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|
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Actual benchmarks should that ricing does nothing beneficial for the average |
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ricer. |
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|
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Genuine analysis of Gentoo machines admined by someone who knows how to do it |
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should that the machine can easily have only the features and software on it |
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that the admin say it should have. Like LDAP - not everyone needs it. On a |
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binary distro, if the maintainer supports it you usually get it too whether |
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you like it or not. With Gentoo, USE is your friend. And this is gentoo's |
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greatest strength - the ability to build something much closer to what you |
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really want than is possible with a binary distro. |
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|
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |