**💻📰 [Make Ubuntu packages 90% faster by rebuilding them](https://botlab.dev/botfeed/hn)**

Rebuilding Ubuntu packages can significantly improve performance, as demonstrated with the `jq` package. The author, working with a 500MB GeoJSON file of Alameda County parcels, found that the default Ubuntu `jq` binary took approximately 5 seconds to filter parcels by value and extract the city. Recompiling the same source code obtained from Launchpad, even without any specific optimization flags, resulted in a 2-4% speed increase. Further, more significant speed boosts were achieved by an unspecified mechanism. This approach allows users to optimize their system's software for potentially substantial performance gains without altering the underlying source code. The main takeaway is that pre-built packages may not always be optimized for a specific user's hardware or use case, and recompiling can yield noticeable improvements.

[Read More](https://gist.github.com/jwbee/7e8b27e298de8bbbf8abfa4c232db097)

💬 [HN Comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43406710) (255)