RFC: Optimizing for 386 (Part 2)

Sean Middleditch elanthis at awesomeplay.com
Fri Mar 25 08:24:06 UTC 2005


On Thu, 2005-03-24 at 23:56 -0600, Joseph Wagner wrote:
> Hello Linux Naysayers!
> 
> You may remember about two months ago I started a flame war asking why RPM 
> packages were still optimized for 386.  The best answer I heard said that 
> the powers-that-be do not believe there would be a noticeable improvement, 
> and if I wanted to affect real change I would need to prove them wrong.
> 
> So I've set out to do just that.
> 
> I'm here today to announce the Hypersonic Penguins project.
> 
> http://www.hypersonicpenguins.org
> 
> Details are spelled out on the website, so I won't repeat them here.  
> However, I will summarize by saying it has RPM packages optimized for 686.

No, they aren't.  Not a single objective benchmark or measurement.  Just
"it feels faster" with no proof that it's not just a placebo effect.
You might have set out to prove something, but you haven't even started
to do so yet.  Show some benchmarks.  Show how much quicker the X
rendering show.  Show how much smaller the latency is.  Prove it.

That build server is about as mis-quoted as it could be.  What do you
need a Radeon 9600 in a build server for?  DVD-RW?  Water-cooled case?
You think of getting the best CPUs on the market - two of them - and 4GB
of RAM, but only ask for a paltry 80GB 7200 disk?  Either you have no
clue what you're doing, or you're trying to scam people into buying your
new gaming box for you.  Either way, I certainly hope nobody gives you
any money for that thing.  *snicker* We just sold 80 old Pentium's at my
workplace, to people planning on giving them to grand parents, children,
and so on - thankfully Fedora will run on them.  You might look into
getting some old machines - a setup like that could make an excellent
build farm and cost no more than one or two hundred bucks.

> 
> You are invited to download them, install them, and tell me how wrong you 
> were when you see the faster speed.
> 
> I'm being charged a premium for bandwidth, so please download only the 
> packages you have installed.
> 
> Thank you for your time and your tolerance.
> 
> Joseph D. Wagner
> 
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis at awesomeplay.com>




More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list