Gentoo Optimizations Benchmarked - Part 2

It would be nice if the make.conf, package.use, and profile were listed. There is more to optimizing a system than just twiddling GCC.

Without that, and since Gentoo is built specifically around those three items, the only thing that the review shows is the performance comparisons against his 'optimizations' which may not be optimized for performance at all. Then toss in how he built his kernel ... lots of variables, drawing a meaningful conclusion from any Gentoo comparison is nearly impossible, as everyone who builds it has different skill levels and different opinions of what is needed and what is not ... heck even what tweaks to GCC is a matter of fun debate.

The best advice I can give regarding building on Gentoo, is to put the build space on its own XFS filesystem. Then it won't cause a bunch of fragmentation elsewhere.

Az: A real Gentoo-user would ask for

#emerge --info

(and uname -a)

true hkwint, though I believe emerge --info only covers globals and not specifically targeted tweaks in package.use

adding that though, I think for a better look at the system he build you would also need package.mask/unmask/keywords to see what level the packages are at. Also if using baselayout or openrc just for giggles.

Hadnt thought about uname -a, but that would be a bit telling too, genkernel or manually with what one would hope would be a slimming and tight .config.

All that being said, there are just too many unknowns to be able to get any meaningful data from the comparison. Heck it takes me a day or two to tighten up a new kernel, make oldconfig is great for revisions, but I always start fresh on a new kernel release. Maybe others are really good at tight kernels right out of the gate, me I have been doing it for years and am still finding tweaks and tunings.