Which Linux distribution that is more suitable for intel and why?

Optimized BINARY LINUX distribution(commercial/download)

• Hi All, I was looking for a BINARY(with source) distribution of LINUX (2.4.1x kernel) which has been built with Intel/GCC Compiler *AND* where all the binaries have been built with GLOBAL optimizations so that the kernel is in sync with the user mode programs for maximum throughput. I should be able to get the Intel/GCC compiler and then rebuild the whole OS for my CPU of choice to get even better CPU utilization. It would also be interesting to have a mechanism to make specific components of the OS(including USER programs) more optimized than others. I'm a LINUX Newbie but have been developing Software for nearly 10 years. I need detailed instructions on how to go about doing this. Thank you very much for your interest.

• Answer:

  Hi Anjanbacchu, This may be far easier than you think. Kernels have been optimized and built for specific processors for a couple years now. I will use Red Hat and Mandrake as examples, but I think all the major distributions have similar features. For Red Hat 7.3, http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.3-Manual/custom-guide/s1-kernel-preparing.html (we will see what that LONG URL looks like in the reply...) indicates that Red Hat builds kernels optimized for Athlon, Pentium and K6, Pentium II and up, and the older 386 and 486's. For Mandrake 6.1 and later... http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/concept.php3 describes optimization for Pentium and later processors as well. About building your own kernel, optimized for a particular system, I suggest the following steps: 1. Install a recent commercial release of Linux. Make sure you install the development tools (e.g., gcc) and kernel products (varies by distribution, usually with a name "kernel source" or "kernel compiler"). 2. Put the kernel source into a directory named like /usr/src/linux-2.4.18 where the suffix relates to the version of kernel and any special options you may wish to use. 3. Download and apply any patches that you may need. I build a kernel for real time processing and get patches for... - kernel preemption (Robert Love - http://www.tech9.net/rml/linux/) - big physical memory allocations (BIGPHYSAREA patch) as well as I have my own patches for HZ (to 1200), increased physical memory locking (from 50% to 80%), and so on. 4. Apply the patches to the kernel in the correct order. Fix any hunk failures if needed. A typical command line is... cd /usr/src/linux-2.4.18 patch -p1 < ../patches/kernel-preempt-2.4.18.patch assumming you put your patches into the directory /usr/src/patches. 5. Follow the instructions in the README file (all of them). In brief... cd /usr/src/linux-2.4.18 make mrproper make xconfig (for the X interface, set the options you need) make dep make rpm (if you have an RPM based distribution) which will build the kernel and generate the package for installation on your system. Some older Red Hat distributions required you to use kgcc to build the kernel - add CC=kgcc to the make dep and make rpm command lines in that case. If you get the kernel source from Red Hat, there is a set of configuration files you can load to get a "known good" starting configuration to use in the xconfig step. The kernel build duration varies by system, but for me it takes a couple hours. 6. Install the kernel. The steps at this point vary based on what your boot loader you have. The steps I do using lilo are... rpm -i /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/kernel-2.4.18-2.i386.rpm (alas, it has that name even when built for P-III) edit /etc/lilo.conf to add the new kernel - copy / edit a similar entry /sbin/lilo (fix errors if necessary) 7. If your system uses a disk image as part of the boot process and the script didn't update it - you will have to do this step manually. My current system doesn't do this, but I think Red Hat uses that when you use an ext3 file system for the modules to mount the root file system. 8. Reboot your system. If it fails to come up, reboot with the old kernel and diagnose the problem and fix, and repeat. I would stay away from 2.5 kernels - especially if you have IDE disks until the IDE drivers get stabilized. You will have to stay current with the kernel developers to guage the maturity of the kernel. The weekly summary at http://www.lwn.net/ has been a good resource, but may be going away soon. You can strip a lot out of a linux kernel (so it uses less memory), but as a first step - use modules to do this. Answer N to the configuration questions only if you will never use the capability. Good Luck --Maniac