Once upon a time, Joseph D. Wagner <technojoecoolusa@xxxxxxxxxxx> said: > OK, let me make clarify what I said. > > AMENDED: All IA32 RPM's are optimized for 386 architecture. And that is still wrong. All FC i386 arch RPMs are optimized for either i686 (up through FC2) or P4 (starting with FC3). Some important RPMs (kernel, glibc, openssl) where the difference has been proven come with i686 arch RPMs as well as i386 arch RPMs. Some other RPMs have code that detects i386 vs. i686 vs. Athlon (really "regular" vs. MMX/SSE/etc.) at runtime and uses the best available. Whenever this comes up, people make some claims of improvement if the instruction set used is i686 instead of i386, but the challenge is to prove it. The only valid way to prove it is to do some type of repeatable benchmark of real applications with Fedora Core installed as distributed. Then rebuild the packages from the same source with the only change being i686 arch instead of i386 arch and retest. Anything else is not a valid test of the gain Fedora could see in switching from i386 arch to i686 arch. If someone takes the time to prove the point (and it is proven that the pain is worth the gain), you will get results; people will listen. Until it is proven, you'll just get told to RTFA. The burden of proof is on those asking for the change. -- Chris Adams <cmadams@xxxxxxxxxx> Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
