@gen2: Are your packages compiled with optimization flags? In fact I find firefox and abiword in the feed take much longer time to start than under pdaX. Firefox takes 8 to 9 minutes to launch (!) and abiword takes a minute or two, while under pdaX it's 2 minute and a few seconds respectively.
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I used -mcpu=xscale (only) for the first 1/2 (or so) of it, then saw your post and added -pipe -mtune=xscale -O2 within a day or 2. Firefox and Abiword had already been done though. Is the difference in speed you're citing just the result of the additional flags, or also some other factors, I wonder?
Anecdotally I've heard pdaX is faster, especially regarding video, but never done any benchmarking here. I'd be happily surprised if the new flags were the only difference between 8 minute and 2 minute launch times for firefox.
FWIW, firefox opens here in 3:45, abiword in 48 seconds...siag 7 (!) seconds...siag is pretty cool, btw, if you haven't checked it out, it's got an abiword-like thing in there in addition to spreadsheets and other stuff.