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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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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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10 % on software is a lot better than forking out $$$ on faster hardware |
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to do that (as gamers do!), but at the end of the day, I can also make |
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my car go faster by painting the diff red (urban myth/joke from my |
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hotrodding days:) and see roughly the same performance boost - i.e., |
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probably wont notice it in real life) |
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|
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BillK |
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On 14/03/13 16:15, Dale wrote: |
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> Howdy, |
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> |
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> I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to |
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> compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared |
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> to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? |
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> |
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> Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any |
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> other large corps run it that we know of? |
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> |
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> I googled a bit but couldn't find anything. Maybe my search terms |
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> wasn't good enough. |
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> |
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> Links would be nice. |
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> |
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> Dale |
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> |
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