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Optimizing Ubuntu - i686

post #1 of 5
9/1/06 at 12:31am
Thread Starter 
Hi

I was look around on the forum and read a post that discribed Ubuntu's i386 package was not optimized for newer processing technologies such as MMX and SSE. I also read that you can use the full potential of your newer processor and ram by upgrading your kernel to i686. I was wondering if there would be much of a speed increase when running a Pentum M Dothan and how I would go about doing this and how I would revert back to my older kernel incase something were to go wrong...I opened up synaptic package manager and found 2 i686 images, one
kernel-image-2.4.27-2-686-smp
and
kernel-image-2.4.27-2-686
Which one should I use?
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post #2 of 5
9/1/06 at 12:38am
the regular. if i am not mistaken smp is the dual core cpus. do note that upgrading the kernel will boost performance somewhat (2-3% on most accounts) but it won't be anything ground breaking since every other package except the kernel will still be i386. if you're looking for speed your best bet is to go from source (gentoo) or a i686 optimized distro (arch)
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post #3 of 5
9/1/06 at 10:50am
TBH even with processor optimisations on all the packages the perceived "speed" of the system will change very little since processor optimisations effect the runtime efficiency of the compiled code rather than load time, which is what most people consider the "speed" of a system. In fact over optimisation (see Gentoo users with 5 line CFLAGS) can slow down load times considerably by increasing binary sizes. What makes distros like SUSE et. al seem slower than say a more customisable distro like Gentoo is the amount of bloat they add in to make it more generic and cover as much functionality as possible.

Anyways, as ABF says having a 686 kernel rather than a 386 one will make very little difference at all but it can't hurt .
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post #4 of 5
9/1/06 at 9:42pm
why are you getting the 2.4 kernel? get 2.6 instead, way newer and faster.

also, I should note that the 686 kernel does not work with X on my desktop. for whatever reason.
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post #5 of 5
9/1/06 at 9:58pm
It seems like I upgraded to an SMP kernal when I was running badger on a P4HT system...ran great either way, I don't remember if I noticed all that much if any difference, but the OS did recognize "both" virtual processors.
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