Compiling KDE

SpEcIeS · 04-15-2005, 10:21 AM

Since SuSE's 9.2 KDE 3.3 is at i586, it there any real advantage to recompiling to i686, or would I be wasting my time?

Thanks

rjlee · 04-15-2005, 01:54 PM

With KDE, I wouldn't bother too much. Recompiling the kernel will make much more of a difference, because much of that is optimised for the processor at a very low level.

If you find a program is running too slowly, first make sure that dcopserver is running. If not, you might consider recompiling that program.

Also, you can get 80% of the benefit for 20% of the work by recompiling kdelibs. But I still doubt if you'll see much difference just from changing the processor type.

Playing with other compiler options, like -funroll-loops, -O3 and so on, will have more of an effect, although it could possibly effect stability as well (in some rare cases).

SpEcIeS · 04-15-2005, 04:18 PM

Thank-you very much rjlee.

Greatly appreciated.

I will have to look into the kernel issue, however what are some of the compiling options that can improve performance, or better yet, where would I read about such options?

Since I was waiting for a reply on this matter I started compiling my own KDE 3.3.2 at 686, because SuSE 9.2 comes with 3.3.0(patched). The kdelibs and kdenetwork managed well, but I have run into this error on kdeaddons and kdebase:

Code:

ERROR: suse_update_desktop_file: unable to read
+ exit 1
error: Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.33485 (%install)

RPM build errors:
    Unknown option ? in verify_permissions(:-:)
    Unknown option ? in verify_permissions(:-:)
    Unknown option ? in verify_permissions(:-:)
    Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.33485 (%install)

I am unsure what this indicates because after reading the changelog in kdeaddons it indicates that the suse_update_desktop_file problem was corrected. Any ideas?

piscikeeper · 04-15-2005, 11:49 PM

if you compile it you can avoid little issues like having to fix the system notifications......

SpEcIeS · 04-16-2005, 02:28 AM

Well rjlee, I took into consideration what you indicated about compiling my kernel, and applied it. At first I lost my system, but it was recovered with my linux rescue disk. I recompiled the kernel a second time, but not making the modules and it seems to run really well now. However a couple of modules did not compile properly, and require some attention later.

Thanks for you input on this, it really helped me look at my kernel.

It was running at 586 when my processor is an AMD Duron 950Mhz.

Thanks again.

rjlee · 04-16-2005, 05:37 AM

You can see the full list of compiler options in the gcc manpage

Code:

man gcc

.

It's not unusual for some experimental options to generate code that won't run, but the compile will usually succeed.

When a kernel module fails to compile, the first thing to try is re-issuing the make command. If that works, then you probably have a fault in your RAM or cache memory (which caused the original build to fail). This is because gcc uses lots of pointers internally, and so is very prone to fail if even one bit gets flipped.

If you still have problems compiling a module, then make sure that you ran make mrproper before compiling, otherwise please post specific details of the problem in a new thread.