Optimized distro for i686

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 05:20:56PM -0500, Steve wrote:
> I just have a question regarding a distro I ran across from
> distrowatch, called Fox Linux (http://www.foxlinux.org/) that says it
> is "optimized for i686"... does this mean not only using the 686
> kernel, but recompiled packages as well? I could not find any details
> on their website to explain further. It looks pretty interesting,
> being a KDE distro based on FC4.

Well if you want easy access to support, pick something common that many
people understand.  If you are already quite experienced and want to try
something new, well then have fun. :)  The less common distributions are
usually that way for a reason.  Only a few newcomers ever make it big.
You need real quality to become a major distribution from scratch today.

> I guess I am curious as to what is involved in "optimizing" a distro
> for a certain CPU/platform.

Compile everything with gcc -m686 or march=i686 or whatever the option
is, then be happy pentium and older machines are quite rare so you won't
care anymore, and of course hope there compiler's optimizer doesn't have
any too serious bugs to break the code.  Very little to be gained in
general though.  The kernel has the most to gain and most distributions
already come with cpu specific kernels you install, and a few libraries
have assembly optimizations for different cpu types, but they can run
time select the correct one already (and do so).

> Thanks for any explanation on this topic, and Happy New Year to everyone!

I consider it useless marketing bragging.  It has little real meaning
other than to say it won't run on older systems at all of course.

Of corse my work involves more embedded style hardware with a geode gx1
processor, so i486 optimized is preferable there, and i586 code just
tolerated on the processor.  i686 wouldn't run.  We use a 486 optimized
kernel, and plain i386 applications for the most part (a few libs use
i486 I believe due to glibc issues).

Len Sorensen
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