On Tue, Aug 28, 2007 at 04:06:10PM +0100, Richard Thompson wrote: > I was wondering why debian doesn't have a port of packages optimised for > i686, I realise they have support for i386, which obviously incudes > everything from an intel 386 to the latest and greatest intel and amd > processors (running in 32bit), ultimatley the i686 already has 'support' > however I just thought it would be great if a port was available where > the packages had been compiled specifically for i686 as I have noticed > that when I use i686 optimised distro's such as arch, or even slackware > there is a noticable performance difference.
This comes up on the list from time to time. The general answer is that packages that benefit from processor-specific compilation (e.g. the kernel, Marillat's mplayer "unofficial" packages, etc.) do exist in processor-specific forms. The vast majority of packages, however, do not benefit sufficiently from processor-specific compilation to justify the complication of supporting extra versions of the packages, much less the infrastructure to automatically select the correct package for your processor when using apt. > Richard Thompson --Greg -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
