Gentoo Linux faster app-load than (Mandrake|Fedora)

[Rahul Karnik]

Mark Mielke wrote:
> I guess this issue is important to me because I find it a little
> embarassing that my wonderful 'linux desktop' at work takes 3X as long
> to start my web browser, and 10X as long to start my word
> processor.

Actually, look at the Gentoo forums. There are plenty of cases where the 
binaries provided by upstream prohects are faster than the "optimized" 
ones compiles by Gentoo users (mozilla and openoffice.org, IIRC). For 
large programs, app load times are *probably* best when compiled with 
-Os, something that is rarely done by Gentoo users. Typical Gentoo 
CFLAGS are "-O2 blah" or "-O3 blah". In my experience, -O2 yields the 
best results, but I would go with upstream guidance every time.

As for processor optimizations, I am willing to bet that they do not 
affect app load times -- places where they might matter are 
computationally intense applications like MPlayer or scientific computation.

Pardon the ramblings,
Rahul
--
Rahul Karnik
rahul at genebrew.com
http://www.genebrew.com/