I want to download or compile a distro optimized for i686 or athlon-xp. There seems to be lots of related discussion on this subject, but I cannot seem to find exactly what I am looking for. Preferably, I'd like to go with Fedora Core 2. If I download the source RPMs, am I basically stuck manually compiling each package in the entire distro to get an optimized FC2 package? Or is there some better way? Or does anyone provide precompiled i686/athlon-xp ISOs that are equivalent to the standard i386 installation ISOs provided by RH/FC?

BTW, I have compiled Gentoo optimized for athlon-xp, but about once a week something would break and I just got sick of the continual fixing. Eventually I capitulated and went back to RH/FC. I find FC just feels good. I may return to Gentoo once it is more mature.

Thanks,
Apollo

Go for Slack. The packages are 486. After installation, you can use a tool named swaret. Then you upgrade a large part of the distro's packages with 686 on the linuxpackages.net "mirrorsite".
"Bonus": you'll learn to use this "state-of-the-art" distro.

I've been wavering with trying the Gentoo pre-compiled packages. Previously, I compiled Gentoo myself -- don't want to go through that again. I find it hard to believe with the popularity of RH/FC that someone hasn't done an i686 compile and made it available in the exact format as RH's own i386 installation ISOs.

Maybe I will take a look at Slackware.

Still interested if anyone has better ideas to get an optimized FC install.

Apollo