Recompile Live Enviroment to use Hard-Float

[WarheadsSE]

It is possible, but remember: we core developers exactly have 1 of these devices at this point (despite the number the community has), and have to essentially target just this one device with time, effort and resources. It is not a matter of possible, as feasible at this point in time.

[Kurlon]

I pulled down raspbian, confirmed it's hard float and played around.

Some specific tasks are faster with hard float. AAC playback in Pithos for example, is actually functional compared to the stuttering, cpu hammering mess it was under soft float. MPlayer didn't really show much of an improvement, although if I want to watch video on a Pi I should really be using the native decoder functionality where I can. Normal operation didn't really seem all that different. Running around the CLI or in X (unaccelerated, it's really not that much quicker than my USB frame buffer on the GoFlex really) in most instances I didn't encounter any noticeable speedups. I stand by my original assessment, hard float isn't going to suddenly make the Pi a faster system.

That said, I've got a Pi to beat on, I've got plenty of reliable storage and bandwidth to abuse, and I've got a boss that wants me getting comfy with the device so I'm up for trying to launch a hard float Arch build while the official devs keep the rest of the project humming along.

[cesarramsan]

I don't know if the gentoo build includes more optimization apart from the hard-float but I feel noticeable performance and responsiveness boost while using the gentoo build. As it was mentioned before, the hard-float is supposed to increase performance with applications that make use of floating points, but general purpose applications(X, browsers, etc...) would probably stay the same. When using the RPI in 640x480, there is no real difference between Arch and Gentoo, but when I am using 1240x720 I feel that X is running smother in Gentoo(I don't know why, this could be perception too but I am almost sure Gentoo loads programs faster and has more responsive menus).
For people interested in having a TRUE performance boost in their X should probably help with the X drivers for the RPI.