(All of the writing below is my personal opinion and unter the licence
'correct me if I'm wrong', because I'm not too deep in hardware)
As you said you are using Linux, I guess you have sources for the
software.
Have you ever thought of getting an Alpha? Based on a benchmark in a
German computer magazine (c't), the Alpha-533MHz is about 4 times faster
in floating point as a PPro with 233MHz. If you want integer arithmetics,
the K6 beats the PPro.
The only thing that is really faster with MMX is the Intel Media Benchmark
and a small speedup due to the larger L1 cache. As I think, the P-II is
just the logical consequence of the poor rate of 'good' PPro chips in the
production due to the large integrated cache which made the die unusable
if a certain amount of the cells failed.
Last and least, the P-II just caches 64MB of RAM.
Kurt
-------------------------------------------------------------
If you put a PC-formatted disk into a Macintosh, you can read it.
If you put a Mac-formatted disk into a Win95-PC, it asks you
whether it should format it.