Ubuntu 25.04 "Plucky Puffin" Development Opens - Defaulting To -O3 Optimizations

[carewolf]

Are they already on x86_64v2 or v3? Then -O3 can actually make a difference

[ms178]

Are they already on x86_64v2 or v3? Then -O3 can actually make a difference

As far as I know there was no follow-up to their x86-64-v3 experiment. It is really a shame that not more distributions offer such more optimized packages, hobby projects like CachyOS manage this and Canonical has more ressources to implement such a change.

[PennRobotics]

Conjecture: The recent popularity of that phrase "FROM ubuntu:latest" would influence port and package defaults as well as the decision to more heavily optimize at least the stripped down container images.

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Edit: After some searching around, it seems the binary sizes are dramatically larger at -O3 (e.g. 25% more). The performance gains are sometimes (task-specifically) relatively high (more than twice as fast) but on average are 2 to 5 percent improved. One thing that is a hassle: It's reasonably difficult to use a debugger on -O3 code. Then again, if a bug only exists at -O3, that feels like a compiler problem. If this change directly makes gcc less buggy, it's a long-term win. If code runs much faster on specific hardware at -O3, it's a win. The only loss is trying this out and then stating, "after hundreds/thousands of engineer hours spent trying -O3, it sucks. We're not doing it." I can imagine many other engineering efforts that are more of a time waste than A/B testing optimization levels.

[Rovano]

Ubuntu has gotten slower and slower with every consecutive release, both in boot time and latency/app startup. It’s been a long time since Phoronix has done boot time comparisons to track changes in OS releases. Michael, do you think we can get one done for Ubuntu maybe going back to 10.04 or earlier?

Probably the biggest optimization would be to not package anything in the default system with Snap or Flatpack and instead let users add these slow packages themselves if they really want them.

My snapped Kubuntu (default) 24.10 on very old SSD 64GB on SATA2(limited bandwight) with old CPU(2013)+binary Nvidia blob.
Startup finished in 1.903s (kernel) + 11.326s (userspace) = 13.230s
graphical.target reached after 11.165s in userspace.

If I choose a distribution without systemd, I get to 7 seconds.

Windows 10 are starting 1-2 minutes on modernness SSD SATA3.

[avis]

forcing -O3 is so retarded, if one ever wants to force optimizations it has to be -Os, nothing more, nothing less. leave the rest to package maintainers.

-Os is so early 90s.

Michael has run multiple benchmarks and showed that -Os is outright horrible for the CPUs made in the past 25 years as -O2 runs circles around it. -Os made sense in the long past when embedded devices/IoTs had very small ROMs.

On the other hand using -O3 indiscriminately is just stupid. It bloats up all your binaries and libraries, while only certain applications benefit from it.

[mrg666]

I use "-march=x86-64-v3 -O3" for the kernel and I think that is enough to get the most of the performance benefits. Maybe, libraries QT or GTK can also add some more performance. Compiling everything with -O3 may not be necessary.

[Tuxee]

and just all this shit like openssh-server is installed on Ubuntu by default. You should know that.

No it isn't. And just to make sure: I checked it on both my 24.04 and 24.10 installs. But I suppose fact-checking is a no-go these days when you can get away with babbling whatever comes to ones mind.

[Rovano]

can someone tell me why on all distributions like Ubuntu from the box all ports like port 22 are open? It's a desktop. it's not clear then all this fuss with security when distribution manufacturers leave such holes. well, really, what kind of security can we talk about if we open port 22 on destope? the newcomer will install it, and only the lazy one will not come to him.

I have my firewall turned off, but this port is definitely not open. At least for me.
I checked it in two CLI utilities and also in the GUI to see what is open where. ;-)

[pino]

A user will install Ubuntu after watching YouTube on how to install wonderful Ubuntu and after that he will open for different jerks.

I'm not a Ubuntu user, but as soon as the primary optimization criterion is someone watching stuff on YouTube, I'd leave. Things don't have to become more and more stupid just because to make them more compatible with these kind of people.

[Rovano]

Why are you cheating? almost any bot will scan the ports and find these holes. Who are you covering for? The creators of Ubuntu what made such shit?

Maybe the GRU is listening to you.

It's strange to generate so many posts about one thing.
Are you blind? I'm writing that my ports are closed.

How come you're not at the front?