Optimized distro for i686

[Sy Ali]

On 1/3/06, Robert Brockway <rbrockway-wgAaPJgzrDxH4x6Dk/4f9A at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 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.

This reminds me of a programming tip that really sunk in.

Don't stop to make things pretty while roughing things out.  First and
foremost, make it work.  Then make it work well.

Make it do what it's supposed to, even if it's terribly ugly and
slow.. then stop to consider what areas would give the best reward for
the effort.

The example for me is.. optimizing something so it goes faster may not
mean anything it it runs unattended overnight.


For me, it's more important that my mouse doesn't hop around and my
music doesn't pop than it is for an application to launch faster.

I used to endlessly fiddle to make things a tiny bit better.. and then
I realised I had no real guage to tell if it was faster or not..
except my own experiences.  When I was running a p2/266, the
experience was that I could do everything I wanted .. slowly.. but
with the right choices things still worked very well together (no
skipping pointer or audio)


But when someone mentions 686 optimised, the firs thing that springs
to mind is Gentoo.  =)
Still, there are bunches of distributions which are tweaked to run on
more contemporary hardware..
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