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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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Share specific examples of software built from source works better for you than packages or pre-built binaries (self.linux)

submitted 5 days ago by TheTwelveYearOld to c/[email protected]

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I looked up specifically examples of this and didn't find answers, they're buried in general discussions about why compiling may be better than pre-built. The reasons I found were control of flags and features, and optimizations for specific chips (like Intel AVX or ARM Neon), but to what degree do those apply today?

The only software I can tell benefits greatly from building from source, is ffmpeg since there are many non-free encoders decoders and upscalers that can be bundled, and performance varies a lot between devices due to which of them is supported by the CPU or GPU. For instance, Nvidia hardware encoders typically produce higher quality video for similar file sizes than ones from Intel AMD or Apple. Software encoders like x265 has optimizations for AVX and NEON (SIMD extensions for CPUs).

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[–] markstos 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Nginx has a number of compile-time optional features and they aren’t all enabled in the pre-built packages. For example, the ability to echo back HTTP requests for debugging.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I used to have to custom compile nginx to get HTTP/3 and brotli working (significant speed benefits), but now it's possible to get those in packages on my OS. This makes maintenance far easier or even automatic for me, which is great from a security standpoint.