On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:08:22 -0600, Joseph D. Wagner <technojoecoolusa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I can count the total number of people in the world who still use a 386 on the fingers of both of my hands. Why are we still catering to this small group of people? > > With the exception of the kernel and glibc, all RPM's are optimized for 386 architecture. Acckk! All RPM's are optimized for i386? But I'm running x86_64! Who let 3 out of the cage with this showstopper? Where's the errata? :) This is a waste of system resources. Study after study shows that you can achieve a 10% - 40% performance improvement my optimizing code for a specific architecture. Windows XP may only be optimized for a Pentium, but by golly, at least the whole thing is optimized, not just the kernel and the C library. > > Just look at X. Is anyone seriously trying to get X to run on a 386? I can understand compiling the text-based programs, like bash, for 386. You can run a text-only box on a 386 just fine. Why do that for X? Why do that for GNOME, KDE, or any graphical program for that matter? > > I know that I can recompile of these program from the source code to achieve those optimizations. However, why should everyone who wants to optimize their systems have to go through that, just so a handful of people with 386 machines can run X out-of-the-box? Then, we have recompile all over again with the next RPM release. > > Why can't the few people who have a 386 be made to recompile X from sources to get it to run on there machines, so the rest of us can enjoy the performance boost from running optimized binaries? > > I think we seriously need to rethink the distribution strategy. At the very least, all graphical programs should be optimized for i686. > > Joseph D. Wagner > > -- > fedora-devel-list mailing list > fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx > http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list > -- Nick Bargnesi http://www.den-4.com Den 4 Software pub 1024D/E8BD2FD0 2004-12-02 Nick Bargnesi <nbargnesi@xxxxxxxxx> Key fingerprint = 6F9D 9404 63CD 2B04 DE7A 0F9D A1ED C1B0 E8BD 2FD0 sub 2048g/56C5D45B 2004-12-02 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
