On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 10:18 AM, Nikos Chantziaras <rea...@arcor.de> wrote:
> Stroller wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>> To be honest, I am surprised this notion of "optimised executables" has
>> stuck around long enough that you've heard it, but it's an old joke to many
>> of us who were around in 2004.
>
> But AFAIK, it *was* faster because Gentoo used the egcs fork of GCC which
> did produce faster code. This was probably the origin of the "Gentoo
> performance" thingy. It was true. Wikipedia also notes this, and further
> states that the name "Gentoo" was chosen (previously it was "Enoch") because
> of this speed difference between Gentoo and other Distros ("the Gentoo
> species is the fastest swimming penguin").
>
> Soon after though, egcs merged back to gcc and all other distros became just
> as fast. So "it was good while it lasted". But this "Gentoo performance"
> cliché seems to stick around till today.
>
The power of good marketing! ;-)
- Mark
