SlackwareThis Forum is for the discussion of Slackware Linux.
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Would it be at all sensible to recompile recreate every single package I want installed so that it's optimized for the Athlon XP architecture and make my own Slackware install CD? I've never tried Gentoo, but I know I love Slackware and I wanted to try out the optimized software thing. Should I just do a stage 1 Gentoo install instead? If I wanted to, could I replace Gentoo's package management system with Slackware's? Besides the package management system and initialization scripts, are there any major differences between the two distributions?
Just use Gentoo, if you are into this whole compile from source and optimisation thing coz I don't think this will work with Slack in it's current state. Slackwares package management is nothing like Gentoo and doesn't necessarily resolve dependencies unless you use third party tools such as slapt-get or swaret.
Oh really? Well I guess what I'll do is do a stage 1 Gentoo install and run some tests, and if I think the speed increase is big enough to go through the trouble, I'll try optimizing Slackware. That kind of optimization would be a LOT of work....
Alot? I have to disagree... I recompiled quite a few packages on Slackware, never with any problems. It basically comes down to:
1) Download the source of the package you need from ftp://MIRROR/slackware-VERSION/source/, make sure you have a proper directory structure. I usually use wget for this.
2) Edit the <packagename>.Slackbuild, and adjust things as necessary (architecture, version, etc). Depending on the package, you might see more or less of an explanation.
3) If you see you are lacking some dependancies needed for the build, see step 1
4) Now sit back, and relax: <packagename>.Slackbuild is all you have to execute. Any dependancies will join the ride.
5) You'll find your newly made package in /tmp.
installpkg/upgradepkg away!
Which reminds me, make sure you have enough space on your /tmp or you might get some weird errors
I know how to go about it, Worstje, but it would still be time consuming. I'd need to copy all the information from the source CDs to my hard drive, and edit the slackbuild script for every package, and there are lots of them. Plus, compiling the larger ones like X will take forever.
Originally posted by Aborted Fetus Would it be at all sensible to recompile recreate every single package I want installed so that it's optimized for the Athlon XP architecture and make my own Slackware install CD? I've never tried Gentoo, but I know I love Slackware and I wanted to try out the optimized software thing. Should I just do a stage 1 Gentoo install instead? If I wanted to, could I replace Gentoo's package management system with Slackware's? Besides the package management system and initialization scripts, are there any major differences between the two distributions?
keyword there being sensible. uhh...no ( this is my opinion only though). lets say you spend 20 hrs doing this ( assuming you want everything ). lets also say that it speeds up your system by 2% ( just a random number I'm throwing in there). how many years would you have to use the system to get back the time it took to do this install?
if you do it, keep in mind some packages when too many optimizations are thrown in behave erratically, so you might want to leave those alone ( I would leave the development environment and glibc alone personally).
Well yeah, if it only speeds things up by about 2%, then it would be a complete waste of time. I hear different things though; some people say that the speed's not noticable, and others say there are dramatic differences, so I'm kinda confused.
Somehow I think that most ancilliary software doesn't usually take advantage of any arch-specific features. Most of whatever improvement you get will come from recompiling just the kernel. Advanced server applications might be a common exception.
Even more discouraging, I noticed that just editing the slackbuild scripts WILL NOT work. The arch, etc. variables are just for file naming, and won't optimize anything. Furthermore, some of the programs override the CFLAGS variable in their Makefile, so using the slackbuild scripts is not an option. I'll have to manually create every package to make sure things are going right, and use the slackbuild script as a guide. This obviously isn't very appealing, so it's less likely now that I'll try this.
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