[ILUG] Suggestions for best 64 bit Linux distro?

[Colm Buckley]

On 22 Jun 2005, at 16:18, Vishal Vatsa wrote:

> Also most people don't want to spend like a couple of days of  
> setting up the system for 10-20% boost. Its just not worth the  
> compile time if don't have the latest and greatest CPU. And if you  
> do then do you really care about 10% boost?

10-20% is *extremely* unlikely.  It might be plausible if you were  
running i386 code on a P4, but not when using funroll-loops etc  
against stock -O2 on x86-64.

Also note that most of the recommended Gentoo optimisations such as  
funroll-all-loops are optimising CPU usage against disk and RAM  
usage.  On most modern systems, where the CPU is very fast and RAM  
and disk slower, this will lead to *decreased* system performance.

You also have to set the time spent compiling against potential  
savings in runtime; most Gentoo packages seem to version-up every  
couple of days, so there's virtually no chance that the (theoretical)  
runtime gains will stack up against the time spent compiling.

     Colm

-- 
Colm Buckley / colm at tuatha.org / +353 87 2469146