Re: [Lilux-help] FreeBSD, compile from source and Distributions

Patrick Useldinger wrote: If you compile everything from source, you can optimize the binaries for your specific processor. Thats all. However you won't feel a big speed advantage by compiling everything. Normally it is sufficient to recompile the kernel, perhaps the glibc and the X Window system. Binaries for i686 systems may be faster on a P4 than binaries for i386 or i486 but they are also larger. Larger binaries may slow down your system because less code fits in the processor's L1 and L2 cache. There have been many discussions on newsgroups about the question if source code distros like Gentoo are actually faster (Gentoo people pretend this). As far as I know there is no evidence for this. Compiling your kernel for your specific processor may speed things up, compiling ls or KDE centainly not. Of course there is also the geek factor by having compiled everything yourself. But as far as I understand that's not your goal. Another point is that distros which are supported on many architectures (Sparc, PowerPC, Alpha, IA64, AMD64, etc.) simply may not have the resources to provide binary packages for all architectures. Look at NetBSD. They support 54 platforms. Most packages are only provided in source form. The i386 is the only platform where you can get precompiled binaries for all the packages. Patrick Kaell