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this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I wonder about the optimizations now. When I used gentoo it was an era where binaries were compiled for lowest common denominator targets. i386, ppc etc. That is they used no optimized instructions at all. It was the era where MMX and SSE were becoming a thing and there were genuine optimizations you were likely missing out on. So compiling your own stuff actually did show varying levels of improvement.
These days I'm pretty sure most binaries are detecting cpu flags and flipping on extra functionality when detected so the optimizations are less pronounced than they were.
But, I'd be interested to know if I've got that wrong. These days, I've gotten older and I don't have time to spend a weekend fixing my system when it goes wrong, as such I'm using pre-compiled distros. Often when they break I'll fall back to my dual boot windows until I have a block of time to fix it. How did I have so much spare time back then?