"As the new owner of a Dell Latitude 2100 netbook, I’m eager to get as much performance out of my little machine as possible. One of the most pressing issues in my life over the last week, therefore, has been to decide whether to use the i386 or lpia build of Ubuntu on my new computer.
"Here’s the decision I came to, and why.
"Unlike Windows, Ubuntu can be easily optimized for different hardware platforms, thanks to the openness of its code. This is theoretically one of Ubuntu’s strengths in a market where consumer-class processors are diversifying again, for the first time in a decade, on new genres of devices like netbooks and MIDs.
"For a while, Canonical tried to play on this strength by offering a version of Ubuntu customized for the Atom processor, which is found in many (but not all) netbooks. While the Atom can run the generic i386 build of Ubuntu, compile-time optimizations for lpia (low-power Intel architecture..."
