[olug] Compiling for your PC

[Phil Brutsche]

Eric Penne wrote:
 > I've been using APT now and I love it.  Recently a thread on a Debian
 > email list was discussing getting rid of i386 and compiling for i486
 > instead.  Some computation intensive tasks in OpenSSL showed a
 > minimum 4% improvement in speed with one having a 100+% improvement.
 > Obviously there will be performance improvements to most packages but
 > is it worth the comile time?

Good question.  Depends on if you're willing to wait for the compile to 
finish.

 > Is it possible to use APT to download the source, compile, then
 > install all in one step?  I know people like Gentoo but I don't want
 > to jump head first into fast flowing currents. :)  I just want to dip
 > my toes in.

Unfortunately not right off hand.  APT is not for people who like to 
compile stuff :)

 > In other news, upgrading from 128MB to 256MB on a Celeron 800MHz cut
 > the load time of OpenOffice 1.0.3 from 2 minutes to 30 seconds.  I'm
 > wondering if compiling from source would cut that time down even
 > more.

Woohoo!  I *new* having a 1GB workstation had benefits! :)

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at brutsche.us