How to Take Advantage of Dual Cores.

axion419 · 2008-02-21 15:35:57

I'm waiting on new egg to deliver my new parts. Since I'm getting a CPU with dual cores, hyper threading and 64Bit. How can I take advantage of it? I was thinking of installing Arch64. That is awesome and all, but how can I go about compiling every package, like this was Gentoo or something? I just want to compile everything with the Flags from the wiki, and then have them actually install as binary packages. So when I update, they will keep the same settings correct? Sorry if this is odd to read, I feel like im not explaining myself very well.

hk2717 · 2008-02-21 15:56:17

I don't understand, if you want compile EVERYTHING. Why don't you choose a source-oriented distro such as Gentoo, Sourcemage or something like that?

On the other hand, if you mean you run "pacman -Syu" and want pacman to update your customized packages while preserving your custom package settings, I don't think it is possible.

fwojciec · 2008-02-21 15:57:25

You don't have to do anything to use two cores -- the kernel will recognize if you have them and make use of them automatically... Unless you're running some custom kernel with SMP support disabled.

If you want to compile everything from source you should use a source based distro, IMO. Don't expect any noticeable improvements in terms of performance though.

brebs · 2008-02-21 16:02:13

axion419 wrote:

I just want to compile everything

Bad idea. Compilation errors are a pain in the neck to debug. That's one of the reasons I switched from Gentoo to Arch.

jacko · 2008-02-21 16:02:20

u set flags in makepkg.conf and use mkepkg to compile everything from source. U won't get that great of an optimization though, in general arch already uses optimization flags for x86_64.

axion419 · 2008-02-21 16:11:08

so their is no way to compile everything once, and then have arch keep those optimizations? so the first time i would compile say, wine, when i pacman -Sy wine, i want it to download the latest version, but optimized the way i set it the first time. I just want to compile the program the first time, and then not have to compile again.

fwojciec · 2008-02-21 16:18:26

axion419 wrote:

so their is no way to compile everything once, and then have arch keep those optimizations? so the first time i would compile say, wine, when i pacman -Sy wine, i want it to download the latest version, but optimized the way i set it the first time. I just want to compile the program the first time, and then not have to compile again.

You understand that in order for a package to work on a system it has to be compiled, right? Arch provides packages that can be installed with pacman -- these were compiled by someone else with Arch default flags and settings so you don't have to compile them. If you want a custom compiled package (with custom flags and settings) you compile it yourself --obviously. I have no idea how you came up with a scheme that you compile a package once and then each new version comes with your compile optimizations by default from pacman repos... If you want each new version custom compiled then you have to, well, custom compile each new version.

Endperform · 2008-02-21 17:57:39

axion419 wrote:

so their is no way to compile everything once, and then have arch keep those optimizations? so the first time i would compile say, wine, when i pacman -Sy wine, i want it to download the latest version, but optimized the way i set it the first time. I just want to compile the program the first time, and then not have to compile again.

This is not possible, with any distribution. Here's why:

When a new version of a program comes out, it has to be compiled from source to contain your optimizations. There's no way for a binary that was compiled on another system to contain your exact options without you recompiling them, unless they have the exact same optimizations you have. Arch builds binaries for everyone with a set of flags. When you download the latest version using pacman, you get a compiled version built by the Arch team with the optimizations they specify.

The closest you can get is to use Gentoo as someone else mentioned, but there again, the new versions will need to be compiled, which is something you cannot get around.

RedShift · 2008-02-22 10:27:07

Which CPU did you buy? All the recent CPUs (core 2 duo) don't have hyperthreading, it's a crappy technology anyway and in some cases even lowers performance.

gorn · 2008-02-23 17:20:13

brebs wrote:

That's one of the reasons I switched from Gentoo to Arch.

I'm in the same boat. I'd been on a steady decline, starting with Slackware, then Linux From Scratch, then Gentoo, and finally I started to improve my distro taste after I discovered Arch.

LFS is great to learn from and I'm really glad I did it. But I also will never do it again, and I'm glad I did it when I did (highschool) because I had the time then and now I don't have the time, but I do get to enjoy the benefits of really knowing how to use Linux. If you really want learn about Linux and fully control your install, and most importantly you have time to invest, you might want to try Linux From Scratch.

Gentoo was really nice when I was using both an intel machine and a PPC machine before PPC was widely supported by linux. I could use the same distro on both my computers, and since it was source based I could take advantage of the package management even though it was intel-centric.

When I was deciding what Linux to put on this machine I reluctantly went with Gentoo. I know Gentoo and I can make it do what I want. And I didn't want to screw around learning a new distro. Eventually I did and now I dual boot and Arch is the primary and Gentoo is around for the software I haven't yet setup on Arch.

Arch is so nice. Binary packages are so much easier and so much faster to install. I see the tradeoff more with regard to the USE flags than the CFLAGS. CFLAGS don't make a huge difference (And you can break things with optimizations). USE flags let you select features to be compiled into the programs. This can remove whole dependencies and save a lot of disk space. Sometimes processing time too.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-02-21 15:35:57

How to Take Advantage of Dual Cores.

#2 2008-02-21 15:56:17

Re: How to Take Advantage of Dual Cores.

#3 2008-02-21 15:57:25

Re: How to Take Advantage of Dual Cores.

#4 2008-02-21 16:02:13

Re: How to Take Advantage of Dual Cores.

#5 2008-02-21 16:02:20

Re: How to Take Advantage of Dual Cores.

#6 2008-02-21 16:11:08

Re: How to Take Advantage of Dual Cores.

#7 2008-02-21 16:18:26

Re: How to Take Advantage of Dual Cores.

#8 2008-02-21 17:57:39

Re: How to Take Advantage of Dual Cores.

#9 2008-02-22 10:27:07

Re: How to Take Advantage of Dual Cores.

#10 2008-02-23 17:20:13

Re: How to Take Advantage of Dual Cores.

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