Glen Ditchfield wrote:

I've got RedHat 7.3 on an old computer with an AMD K6-2 processor. Looking through /var/log/rpmpkgs, I see that nearly every package came from an i386 rpm. The exceptions are kernel-2.4.18-10.i586.rpm and xmame-0.57.1-2.i586.rpm.

Sounds reasonable.

gcc 2.96 supports -march=k6, but the gcc info file doesn't say much. Is there any difference between -march=k6 and the intel equivalent (which would be -march=i586, I think)?

I don't think so. For the most part they are equivalent. There are minor differences but not worth worrying over. I run a K6 and it handles i586 code fine.

Are there any programs that would benefit from recompilation for the k6 or i586? I expect XFree86 would be able to make use of the MMX instructions. How about AMD's 3DNow extensions?

I don't know about X. The kernel would probably have some speed improvement after a recompile (then again it's already i586 code so don't bother). Individually I don't know if there would be much of an improvement over i386 code. Collectively if all the updates from RedHat could be grabbed as i586 there probably would be a noticable improvement. Recompilation of *everything* might be more frustration than it's worth though...

Lately I've been looking either for the i586 updates when I need to resolve dependancies, or I've grabbed source and compiled them (with the make files). The choice is up to you if you want to follow the same practice. The rpms go in easier, but compiling the software produces a better result (while taking a longer time to get it installed).

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Later Mike