Compile primary services for performance gain

Question

Greetings,

Is it worth it to compile primary services like Apache, MySql and on another note, the kernel to squeeze out more performance?

Ubuntu 10.04 64bit

// EDIT

I mean compile from source with architecture specific flags instead of using x86_64 binaries.

Cheers.

Answer 1

In my point of view, nowadays I would not recommend to compile such services unless you are trying to run them on a specific platform for which your distribution does not provide packages.

Distributions not only provide packages for a wide variety of architectures, but they also provide security fixes, which you might miss.

Unless you have specific needs, I would recommend against it (and back in the old days, I used to compile almost everything).