Optimized distro for i686

[Robert Brockway]

On Fri, 30 Dec 2005, Christopher Browne wrote:

> The trouble is that sometimes bugs emerge when you use unusual
> compiler options; figuring out what flags are safe is something of a
> package-by-package thing.  Universally applying all the same compiler
> options everywhere doesn't work.

I would revise this by saying "universally applying all the same compiler 
options everywhere" might not work.  Of course even "might not work" is 
highly undesirable.  Aggressive optimisation and various other compiler 
flags can make significant changes in resulting code.

> It's not at all obvious that the result will actually be meaningfully
> faster.  For instance, database apps tend to have disk I/O as their
> bottleneck, and changing compiler options can't change that.

Bingo.

System optimisation is a complex issue and it's entirely possible that the 
changes caused by recompiling everything may save you nothing (or even 
make things worse).  It's important to know what the performance problem 
is before selecting a solution.

Cheers,

Rob

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