Comment Re:Performance boost? (Score 2, Interesting) 405
Why would code compiled on your system run any faster than the same code on someone else's system?
Because many pre-compiled packages use conservative optimization flags and may lack specific code paths for certain processors and instruction sets. They might also have chosen a compiler which doesn't produce the fastest code around. I'm not sure how it stands today, but a few years back, ICC produced code up to 30% faster than GCC or MSVC.
The difference all depends on the type of application of course. Overall, you might only see a performance difference of 1-5%, but for specific parts of the application, performance increase may be anywhere between 10 to 200%.
Last, compiling yourself also means you can choose what gets compiled and what not. Which in turns reduces diskspace and memory usage of the executable and may increase security and performance a bit. For things like Kernels and such, you need to compile it yourself if you want support for specific things (ALTQ for PF under FreeBSD for instance).