Depends. Lots of those huge distros have lots of programs. Many of which duplicate functionality. Ie, 20 different editors for console/X.

Exactly. Some of them also have free trials of commercial products. Ha!

Oh and something else to add to the wish list! Pentium compiled packages! Down with 486's!!... ;) Or at least make it _really_ easy to create a i586+ distro.

'make world target=i586' ? :)

Actually here is a question. Anyone know if RH6.2 with stock standard gcc (ie, egcs 1.1.2 aka egcs-2.91.66) can produce i586 binaries?

I run RH6.1 on beltaine, but I may have upgraded GCC. rpm -qa | grep egcs egcs-1.1.2-24 egcs-c++-1.1.2-24 from the GCC info page (with a bit of searching) info egcs -> Invoking GCC -> Submodel Options -> i386 Options -------------------------------- Intel 386 Options ----------------- These `-m' options are defined for the i386 family of computers: `-mcpu=CPU TYPE' Assume the defaults for the machine type CPU TYPE when scheduling instructions. The choices for CPU TYPE are: `i386', `i486', `i586' (`pentium'), `pentium', `i686' (`pentiumpro') and `pentiumpro'. While picking a specific CPU TYPE will schedule things appropriately for that particular chip, the compiler will not generate any code that does not run on the i386 without the `-march=CPU TYPE' option being used. `-march=CPU TYPE' Generate instructions for the machine type CPU TYPE. The choices for CPU TYPE are: `i386', `i486', `pentium', and `pentiumpro'. Specifying `-march=CPU TYPE' implies `-mcpu=CPU TYPE'. `-m386' `-m486' `-mpentium' `-mpentiumpro' Synonyms for -mcpu=i386, -mcpu=i486, -mcpu=pentium, and -mcpu=pentiumpro respectively. -------------- so, its actually sufficient to pass -march=i586 to compile with pentium optimisations. I tweaked my global rpmrc thusly... (olly, you may already know this, but its for the rest of the group as well, if they didn't know it ;) it already has lines like: optflags: i486 -O2 -march=i486 optflags: i586 -O2 -march=i586 optflags: i686 -O2 -march=i686 meaning it will compile for the correct architecture, if you set it up right. later on in the file is a section with a whole lot of 'buildarchtranslate' options, such as buildarchtranslate: i586: i386 changing this to read 'i586' means rpm builds i586 target rpms by default. alternatively you can pass the --target=i586 to have the same effect, i beleive. of course, stuff built for an i686 will have problems running on an i386, so be careful when building rpms for other computers! also.. re recent conversation on .rpmmacro entries... if you look in /usr/lib/rpm/macros it has all the macros you might want to set. Some are only useful in the spec file of an srpm, but a lot could be useful. Probably not a wise idea to change this file directly, override the options in your $HOME/.rpmmacros file if you want to play ------------ WLUG - The Waikato Linux Users Group To unsubscribe, send an email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz with "unsubscribe wlug" in the body of the message.