The State Of The Personal Computer

[Guest]

ok, if we're going to compare OS to girls, I'd say:

Linux is the bright intelligent one!
She can do a lot of advanced stuff if you know how to approach her!
She's very complex, and requires a partner that is smart to fully know her, but for the simple she can be the simplest girl understanding just about everyone!
The only thing is she needs a partner that can keep her together or else she'll be on the same level as MacOs.
The good thing is she's always willing, though not always able.

Windows definately is your average housewife, much less willing to allow you to do just about anything.
She has more rules set, but generally can get the work done pretty well.
The older she gets, the slower she gets, and she needs a pretty advanced partner to understand her, and 'clean her up'.
When she refuses, cleverness often won't help. Force in the shape of hacks sometimes will.
It is by the abusing of her weaknesses that you can either make her do what she never intended to do, or can get her seriously ill too!
Windows is willing most of the time, and most of the time able to bid your request.

MacOs Is not so easy to get ill. She's more the type of woman that is a NO doer. More no than yes if you ask anything outside of her standard routine.
She is more expensive than Windows, and only consumes brand-name items (MAC), refuses to take in anything else.

A good thing about Mac is that she can act like Windows! And pretty good even!
She can do nearly everything Windows does acting like her, only WAAAY slower!
She'a really not comfortable doing things outside of her own tasklist.
Ow, and she's not techsavy neither!
MacOs has potential, but is rarely willing to do anything outside the ordinary.
If she does, she's slow as a turtle, only because she never even tried to say Yay instead of Nay!

I guess I'm stuck with the housewife, but occasionally like to test the young girl Linux too!

i'm not so for nay-sayers.

 

[arkadi]

One more thing, it all mostly true for English native users. OS X and Linux got limited support in some languages. And on top of that, unfortunately some sites support IE only. Majority of official sites at my country like banks and government services.

 

[dmuir]

Hardware support on Linux is not a significant problem. That was definitely not what was driving MSI's 4x higher return rates for Linux netbooks. It wasn't usability either. It was familiarity. It's because it was unfamiliar and wasn't windows.
Oddly enough, I think it's because Linux is free that it is unable to take over a larger marketshare. Linux is free, but to a lot of people, so is Windows, so it's a moot point. On the flipside the mac has the benefit of having a higher entry cost, and that to use the os, you have to buy new hardware. People buy it because it looks cool, no viruses, malware, easier to use, etc. Most people I know who have moved over to a mac have hated the experience because *surpise* it isn't like Windows. But because they've paid $$$ for the system, there's a bit of motivation to learn how to use their shiny new machine.

Linux is already a perfectly fine desktop platform. I've been using it as my main desktop for two years now. But the highlights of Linux (choice, freedom etc) are things that the mainstream aren't interested in. They want their Windows.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]wh3resmycar[/nom]@ neiroi think you should blame ati for their crappy drivers not ms.[/citation]

In part I do ofcourse. But it's not as easy sa blaming 3com for not bothering to create a driver. Ati has created a driver that should work well - and I've heard rumors that they've gotten a lot better at it since I had the x800 with very very very bad drivers. But since it still doesn't work properly, I'm kinda guessing something in windows itself causes it. It's the same issue I had with the 8.9 driver before I tried xp (in vista 32), and the same problem I've had with all drivers since (now on vista 64). The graphics driver just isn't stable, and I suppose aero or something else causes it.

Anyway, my point is, that the overall experience is, that vista still crashes. It doesn't much matter to me if it's microsofts fault or amd's, cause the effect is the same. Apple's really the only company that guarantees it doesn't crash. But on the flip side, they're also the only company that guarantees an enthusiast will never be happy with what he bought (content maybe, but not happy).
Anyway at the end of the day it's my own fault really. If I exclusively bought hardware that is on microsoft's official list, I'm quite sure it'd be very very stable. The base os isn't easy to break after all. It's much more tolerant to ntfs errors, driver crashes, application crashes etc. and it doesn't need to reboot every time you wave at it. But it still crashes in my setup.

 

[mitch074]

Pretty much valid, all over - except...

- I don't agree with hardware support in Linux: it's actually better than Vista's for older hardware, and most modern hardware has same day support in Linux and in Windows (game controllers don't really need drivers, AMD provides same-day support for their latest cards and has a common OpenGL stack between Windows and Linux, Nvidia does pretty much the same, Intel hardware is supported in kernel before actual hardware exists...). The only time I had trouble was with an Epson all-in-one printer, where the driver wasn't provided by the distribution, but was available on the printer maker's website; my last 'forced' use of the command line. On the other hand, I had to unpack, manually extract the .vxd, and rewrite the .inf file for a webcam - which had a Vista driver - to install it. On Linux, that same webcam was automatically installed. It was a known brand - with supposedly Windows Vista support.

- Wine has gotten very good: installing World of Warcraft, for example, is as easy as on Windows (P2P updates included) provided your distribution doesn't mount the install DVDs as Mac/UNIX filesystems (which dissimulates the Windows files, solved with a manual mount). But then, many people install through the P2P downloader anyway, which works flawlessly (and I get better ping times under Linux than Windows), so even then it's not much of a problem.

- you mentioned DRI2; yes, graphics subsystems are still a bit of a mess in Linux, but that's mutating: DRI2, GEM/TTM, and Gallium will provide: hardware acceleration of video decoding on any shaders-capable GPU (found nowhere else), no flashing boots (in-kernel modesetting, Mac-only for the moment), use video RAM as swap (found nowhere else, already functional if hackish), and improved performance on the desktop and in games. Status: AMD cards are migrating to Gallium (Free drivers, closed driver uses similar design), DRI2 is ready for the next kernel revision, mode setting is already in it for Intel hardware, S3 and Via have freed their drivers...

I however wonder why the dig at the state of modern browsers in Linux: "only Firefox". Well, not only is Firefox quite modern, it also exists in 64-bit on Linux, and it's not alone:
- Opera. Yes, it is available on Linux. It works quite well.
- Konqueror 4: you know, Webkit sprung from Konqueror 3; the KDE project didn't sit idle since then and cleanly backported a lot of Webkit into KHTML...
- Chrome's code base is called Chromium. Linux port has V8, Webkit and the protocol handlers functional, but the UI isn't done yet.
- the ony browser not present at all on Linux is Internet Explorer. If this is the reason for the dig, sorry, I gotta laugh out loud (IE and Modern browser... Sounds like 'Military Intelligence')

 

[Guest]

For gods sake Alan, why can't you write an article that doesn't have pages of replies arguing with you? Have you not yet learnt that you are all but alone in your support of the Mac? Why do you feel so compelled to continue insulting other systems, or, more often picking examples that are simple straw men?

Your bias is about as obvious as a blue whale on land.

 

[fletchoid]

[citation][nom]Linuxman44[/nom]Until linux programs stop using indecipherable names like "Evolution, Firefox, F-Spot, Gimp, Brasero, Banshee, xgl/Compiz" it isn't going to get anywhere on the desktop.......The average user will have no idea what Gimp or Banshee does vs names like Photoshop and iTunes which make inherent sense and reduce the confusion and make it seem 'serious'.[/citation]

I agree. It's like the guy who names items in the IKEA store went on a rampage. Since I installed Ubuntu, I have been convincing my friends to give it a try, but you start to sound like a total geek talking to them about grub and gimp and Brasero (Spidermans arch enemy, with a giant flame throwing bra as her weapon). It makes you sound like a nut case when you are describing the software available.

I do, however, love the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distro (another stupid geek word), and am finding myself using Window less and less. Gaming is the only reason I go into Windows now. The Gnerds behind Linux gneed to apget in touch with the gnon gnerds of the metaverse and start gnaming software with sexy, descriptive names, and make the OS more appealing to the average non power user.

 

[thexder1]

First I would like to say that with Linux there is plenty of support for Linux that is free most people just do not know where to get it. There are Linux User Groups all over the place that would be more than willing to help people get Linux installed and running on any computer. Also Ubuntu is easy enough to install that the average user can usually get it working without any help. Linux also seems to have many more apps than Windows and in Linux most of those apps are free and just as good if not better than their proprietary software Windows counterparts.

Also Mac OSX uses a BSD based Kernel which is very much like a Linux Kernel. Most of the software may not be compatable with Linux but with a little work you could get a system running free BSD to not only look like and run like Mac OSX but you should also be able to get most of the software working in any BSD distro.

The main reason that Linux and Mac OSX are not that great for games is because the 3D in most games is written in D3D which is Windows only. I never really understood that because it has been prooven many times that OpenGL is just as good as D3D but there is no licensing and using it will open the games up to a wider fan base by allowing Linux and Mac OSX versions very easy to produce.

 

[cynewulf]

As a group, Microsoft estimates 10 in 1,000 PCs as a whole have detected malware. To put that into perspective, if 10 in 1,000 flights crashed, one day of flights at Los Angeles International Airport would result in 6.2 plane crashes.

What a bizarre analogy!

 

[Guest]

1 question:
Why do you call a PC system running windows a 'PC', but a PC system running linux a 'Linux'?

On the last page, it's not 'PC' share, it's Windows share. Please fix that.

 

[Mr_Man]

I ran test.blend in Blender on a Linux installation and a Windows installation on the same machine using a dual-boot. Same program, same hardware. It rendered a full minute faster (6 minutes vs 7 in Windows). 'Nuff said.

 

[Guest]

Comparing the number of applications running on the different OS systems is, to my opinion, a false argument. Of course a popular FOSS program will run on a closed software OS as well, but not the other way around because of the limits closed software imposes. For example, MS will never port its applications to a GNU/Linux platform.

I did not see much arguments concerning propiatery and open data formats and the related backward compability. Lets see if we can display / print all photos taken during our childhood after 20 or 30 years when stored in propiatary formats, like one of the many RAW formats are used by different camera manufactures. I will not take that risk, not for my photos, neither for any document I am genarating at this time.

Anyway, it is an interesting article. Thanks

 

[quickmana]

Alan,
Giving statistics in a per 1000 makes it easier to deal with small numbers, but please give percentages in a per 100 so I don't have to convert the numbers into an understandable format while reading.

Example, "Machines with Windows XP RTM are infected at a staggering 33.8 systems per 1,000."

Change to, "Machines with Windows XP RTM are infected at a staggering 3.38%."

 

[captaincharisma]

What, going from SUSE to Fedora? SUSE is supreme!!

then explain why in SUSE its a pain in the @$$ to get a usb memory stick working? at the rate Linux is going it will not be at a user friendly level like windows till the year 3000. i tried all OS'es out there and i still cannot find one that will make me leave windows

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

[citation][nom]QuickMana[/nom]Alan,Giving statistics in a per 1000 makes it easier to deal with small numbers, but please give percentages in a per 100 so I don't have to convert the numbers into an understandable format while reading.Example, "Machines with Windows XP RTM are infected at a staggering 33.8 systems per 1,000."Change to, "Machines with Windows XP RTM are infected at a staggering 3.38%."[/citation]
Just run the article with an -h flag for "human readable." Problem solved!

I've been dual-booting Ubuntu on my laptop since 7.04, and on the family desktop exclusively since 7.10. I'm not going to say it was painless. Mainly, video drivers seem to be an issue occasionally, enabling problem-free playback of Quicktime requires voodoo magic, and the previous stable Flash plugin is an abominable resource-hog. I've even run across the occasional site that requires IE to work.
But overall it's been interesting for me, opened me up to a wealth of free software and inspired me to do things with a PC I hadn't done before, and it didn't cost me anything except a blank disk. I can play the games I want with WINE, or on my laptop's XP partition (the only reason I keep it around anymore). None of the rest of my family are gamers, so mainly internetting, an office suite, and email are all we need for now. I don't think I'll be installing any version of Vista any time soon. Maybe when Windows 7 comes out.

I think there will be more room for "Linux on the desktop" as time goes by. Look at motherboard and laptop manufacturers, turning increasingly to "Splashtop" operating systems for basic computer use without waiting for Vista to load. Linux on mobile devices holds a lot of promise where Vista would be too tight a fit, or too expensive. I don't expect it to replace Windows as a desktop, but a surprising number of people may find they can comfortably co-exist.

 

[Tindytim]

Good god. The Mac bias in the article is so pungent I can taste it.

[citation][nom]thexder1[/nom]The main reason that Linux and Mac OSX are not that great for games is because the 3D in most games is written in D3D which is Windows only. I never really understood that because it has been prooven many times that OpenGL is just as good as D3D but there is no licensing and using it will open the games up to a wider fan base by allowing Linux and Mac OSX versions very easy to produce[/citation]

Hello? Long Peaks here, I suck.

DirectX is a better package, are far as functionality. OpenGL is just graphics, meaning you need something else. Now, this wouldn't be to bad of OpenGL offered the competitive technology to D3D 10, but it doesn't. The big problem with OpenGL, is it isn't specifically meant for games, and you end up with a bunch of bitchy CAD designers that want all the new features, but they don't want to learn anything new.

So OpenGL ends up being decrepit, and full of outdated crap, for the sake of winey people. I'm still annoyed about the Long Peaks fiasco.

 

[Tindytim]

Sorry for the Double post, I prematurely posted there

[citation][nom]fletchoid[/nom]I do, however, love the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distro (another stupid geek word), and am finding myself using Window less and less. Gaming is the only reason I go into Windows now. The Gnerds behind Linux gneed to apget in touch with the gnon gnerds of the metaverse and start gnaming software with sexy, descriptive names, and make the OS more appealing to the average non power user.[/citation]
Took the words straight out of my Mouth.

Although I was starting to play TF2 using WINE (works pretty well), but it doesn't seem to like my dual monitor setup. So I only go into Windows to game, and test some code.

 

[mapesdhs]

Makes me laugh that people feel the need to 'convert' others on
these issues. Just use whatever works for you. Everyone has their
own needs. I'm an oddball in that most of my main systems are
SGIs, but I do have a decent PC for gaming and video conversion,
running XP Pro 32bit atm:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/ASUS_M2N32-WS-Pro.jpg
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/Gigabyte8800GT-Zalman.jpg
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/mysystemsummary2.txt

I chose a mbd with PCIX support so that I could still benefit
from the superior performance of U320 15K rpm SCSI RAID. For
gaming, I run Oblivion/Stalker at 2048 x 1536, 16X AF, all
detail settings maxed out. Yum. 8) CoD4 awaits in its box
unopened for future fun.

Much as I might like to use Linux for video conversion, it is
definitely easier to setup such things for Windows, with a huge
range of free applications available and excellent resources
such as videohelp.com. Last time I looked into doing this with
Linux, I quickly tired of wading through multiple sites, lengthy
dependency lists and other issues. Nobody bothers to make any
kind of overall guide or resources page for specific application
areas like this, and the sense that one is expected to relish
dealing with low-level configuration issues quickly becomes
annoying. Apps like ffmpeg and mencoder are clearly powerful
tools, but sometimes a GUI interface really does help so much;
VirtualDUB and others for Windows fit the bill perfectly.

I use an SGI for my main desktop (900MHz Fuel system, 8MB L2,
4GB RAM, U320 SCSI, etc. - Alan, try that for responsiveness! 😀)
but Linux still has some way to go before I'd consider it for
a main desktop, and certainly not for gaming. I've never liked
any of the GUIs available for Linux (MAXX Desktop looked
promising, but still not a finished product), they've always
felt a bit too simplistic or geeky. On the other hand, I don't
like the OTT bells and whistles approach of Vista either. For
me, at least in terms of the interface, Windows peaked with XP.
I suppose with the way games evolve, eventually I'll have to
switch to Vista for gaming (or whatever is the current MS OS of
the day), but not until I have no choice, ie. PC hardware and
games that are not supported on XP.

Around next April/May I'm looking forward to getting a Core i7
system for video encoding (production machine; current system is
more of a test bed). Unless Linux undergoes some kind of drastic
revolution, it'll be running XP Pro.

Whatever though. Use what works for you. Few people here would
consider using SGIs I expect, but I have my own peculiar needs. 😀
I was surprised Alan said he used to use an Octane though;
responsiveness and feel was always a strong point of SGI's
mid-range desktops, which is why I use one - it feels
faster than my 3.25GHz 6000+. And it doesn't crash. And there's
no viri or malware (period). I always do my internet banking
and online shopping on the SGI - far more secure than doing
the same thing with Windows. I was a sysadmin in academic depts.
for 10 years, so security matters a lot to me. In this regard,
Windows loses badly; it's crazy that as-is MS ships products
which are simply not safe. No other area of consumer technology
is like this. It would be like cars being shipped without locks,
VCRs without motors or phones without keypads...

Ian.

 

[Guest]

"In the Mac OS9 era, there was no true preemptive multitasking support. That means that while you could open multiple applications at any given time, the operating system could not automatically allocate computing resources to each application. Holding the mouse button down, for example, stopped the entire system until you finished your selection. You can be Hiro and even stop time."

What resources? Any process can get as many resources as OS allows. Preemptive multitasking means that any process can be preempted, that is suspended and the CPU may be given to another process to execute for a while. Without preemption process has to relinquish the resource by itself. So, preemption gives a feeling of more responsiveness from the processes, because no process can be executed indefinitely thus stalling other processes.

 

[Guest]

To those that believe that Windows XP gets more viruses and stuff because its mainstream and gets attacked more. This is a bunch of crap. Linux doesn't get viruses, because it designed better with its user priviledges and execution rights. Linux is a clone of Unix, which was from start designed as a multiprogramming time-shared operating system. Security was a design concern from start. Windows never had concerns like that. That's why any crappy software has the ability to freeze a windows machine. Any virus can destroy system files. And so on.

Mac OS X is based on a BSD kernel, thus it's a UNIX clone as well. That's why its more stable than windows.

 

[randomizer]

[citation][nom]Alexandru4[/nom]And so on.Mac OS X is based on a BSD kernel, thus it's a UNIX clone as well. That's why its more stable than windows.[/citation]
I can lock-up OSX through normal usage more easily than Windows.

 

[mapesdhs]

Indeed; the concept of file ownership and the three levels of
access permissions has always been at the heart of every UNIX
variant. With Windows, such ideas have always been inadequate
bolt-ons at best.

Many years ago I wrote a history of UNIX which summarised some
aspects of how UNIX evolved in terms of security compared to
Windows:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/admin/day1a.html#HISTORY

Part of a course I wrote which is taught at a few Unis worldwide.
Bad me not updated the text in ages... :\ The history summary
is still ok though.

Ian.

 

[chuckles]

I've been running the latest version of ubuntu, 8.10, it came out October 30th. Its more stable than any Windows os I have ever run. I used to run widows primarily, then about a year ago, I dual booted to ubuntu (7.10 to be exact). I couldn't quite get the feel of it, it just wasn't the windows "norm" that I was used to. Now, its probably been a good 6 months since I booted windows. I've got more eye-candy than vista or leopard, and I use less ram.

As far as apps go, I use firefox for the web (if you really need IE for a web page look here: http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page) I've actually found that some pages work better in firefox - that's just my experience. Media player? Rhythmbox, simple clean and efficient - more than I can say for itunes or wmp. I like rhythmbox because it integrates nicely into ubuntu (more specifically gnome) if you want a more "fancy" media player, try songbird, its still heavy in development, but I find it fairly stable, and it has improved alot over the last 6 months. IM? Pidgin, I honestly wouldn't use any other client, whether I was running linux, vista, or os x. (yes you can get pidgin for os x, they just call it adium 😉 Gimp works in place of photoshop, and I find it easier to use too. If you want a dock, check out avant window navigator (abbreviated AWN). I never started using email clients until I used linux full time, I used to use thunderbird, but recently switched to evolution because it is lighter weight. I use open office, if you for some reason hate open office and must have your microsoft stuff look here: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=31 If there is something else you absolutely need, try virtualbox. its like paralells - only FREE! (yes, it works with mac too... just google it). I used to go back to windows to game, but the games I play work just fine in wine, CS:S COD2 COD4, that's about all I play. btw, its not like I have insane hardware to do this either. just 2gbs of ram, an old optron 180 oc'ed to 2.6ghz and the wheezy old 6600gt.

If you want to spice up your ubuntu install (I don't like the orange-ish brown either) check out http://www.gnome-look.org/ they aren't that hard to install either, just right click on the desktop, click "Change Desktop Background" then click on the "Theme" tab and just drag and drop the downloaded file into the window. That wasn't so hard, was it?

Oh yeah, almost forgot, to install all those programs I talked about, just click on "Applications" (at the top by default) then click "Add/Remove..." search, check, and apply. Pretty simple. Just remember to explore a little, you didn't learn windows or os x the first time you tried it, did you?

If your wondering how much experience I have with other os's, I used windows my whole life until I switched to linux, I still use it on my work computer (it came with vista 64, Solidworks 2008 wouldn't install, downgraded to vista 32, it installed, but crashed every 5 minutes, so I downgraded to xp 64, now sound doesn't work, but atleast I'm productive) I've used os x slightly, fixed some of my friends macs a few times (yeah it happens to a mac too), os x isn't bad, I like it better than windows, but I'm not paying that price, and games still don't work.

Regards,
Charlie

P.S. mapesdhs, or like guns coming without safeties O.O

 

[AlanDang]

[citation][nom]mapesdhs[/nom]I use an SGI for my main desktop (900MHz Fuel system, 8MB L2,4GB RAM, U320 SCSI, etc. - Alan, try that for responsiveness![/citation]

(Smile) Exactly. It's sounds elitist, but the only people who know what responsiveness means are people who used SGI IRIX machines. People associate SGI with 3D graphics, but real strength of SGI designs were bandwidth. SGI's were always brilliantly designed systems, and to date, I have yet to encounter a better chassis design than the Octane in terms of air flow. I've seen some reviews showing an 4x400MHz R12000 handling NTSC video better than today's 8-core Penryn based systems. Of course, move to GPU accelerated tasks or HD video and the SGI's can't keep up.

What killed IRIX was the rising talent of NVIDIA and ATI (which disrupted the SGI's stronghold on graphics) and the AMD Opteron/Athlon64 (which disrupted SGI's stronghold on computation, and ultimately led Intel to drop the Pentium4 architecture for the Core architecture). With the economies of scale of consumer products, SGI simply could not compete. Today, SGI survives only as a supercomputing vendor with fast interconnects.

The nice thing is that the 8-core 3.2GHz Mac Pro gives you the same responsiveness that SGI's were famous for. It's a really satisfying feeling. Most IRIX-exclusive apps have mostly gone to Linux.

 

[mapesdhs]

AlanDang writes:
> (Smile) Exactly. ...

😀


> ... It's sounds elitist, but the only people who know
> what responsiveness means are people who used SGI IRIX machines.

SGI did mess up on occasion (eg. R5K O2s felt kinda sluggish, despite
their amazing strengths for video/imaging), but yes it's one of the
main reasons why I use them. Do a dozen things at once, no slowdown,
no crash, even if some of the tasks involve burning CDs or other
things which under Windows can so easily go splat.


> People associate SGI with 3D graphics, but real strength of SGI
> designs were bandwidth. ...

I've been having fun with Octane, seeing how far it can go. Atm I can
get 511MB/sec sustained disk speed (NOT cached) and hope to reach
625MB/sec shortly. Not bad for a 400MHz system from 1996. 😀

For others reading this, see the following page which shows how MIPS
CPUs compare to modern x86, in this case for ray-tracing a very small
but complex scene - check the results for Test 2, and remember MIPS
CPUs do not have anything like SSE/SSE2/etc. to help with the processing:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/c-ray.html

Clock for clock, even without the benefit of SSE, MIPS does rather
well. Its strong point was always fp. Never so good for int tasks
though. x86 is definitely best for video encoding.


> ... SGI's were always brilliantly designed
> systems, and to date, I have yet to encounter a better chassis design
> than the Octane in terms of air flow. ...

I assume you know some people have converted Octane chassi to take
modern x86 boards? I sold one earlier this year to a guy who turned
the case into an Opteron/Linux system. 😀 Here's an example I found:

http://home.comcast.net/~robhensel/Octane/index.htm


> ... I've seen some reviews showing
> an 4x400MHz R12000 handling NTSC video better than today's 8-core
> Penryn based systems. ...

Indeed, partly due to the gfx acceleration I expect (InfiniteReality).
Btw, I have a system like this, ie. an Onyx2 deskside: quad-R12K/400
(8MB L2 per CPU), 4GB RAM, IR3 gfx (256MB texture RAM, 400MB VRAM),
optical FC card, optical GigE card, quad-SCSI card, etc. Arrived only
yesterday:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/myonyx2.jpg

I already have the boards to upgrade it to quad-R14K/500MHz, the best
it can take.


> ... Of course, move to GPU accelerated tasks or HD
> video and the SGI's can't keep up.

HD video is not a problem; Octane can do it easily (see above disk
ref). For uncompressed 1920x1080 with Flame/Smoke I can get 80fps for
4:2:2 and 55fps for 4:4:4:4. However, Sparks processing is a very
different matter; modern PCs have a big advantage here as that's all
done on the main CPUs, though SGI's later desktop (Tezro) is pretty
good for HD (up to quad-R16K/1GHz with 16MB L2 per CPU, 16GB RAM, 7 x
PCIX slots; it can handle two uncompressed HD streams at once) but it
still doesn't have quite the same Sparks processing speed as a decent
dual quad-core XEON system. I've not yet tested Tezro for disk speed,
but more than 1GB/sec should be easy.

Beyond that, there's Onyx350 and Onyx3xxx of course, and they really
are still awesome for HD and beyond (4K no problem, even 8K),
handling dozens of streams at once if need be. I'm in the process of
buying a 24-CPU (R14K/600) Onyx3800 dual-pipe IR3 from a guy in the
US. It has 48GB RAM, 16 x 2Gbit FC cards, 90 x PCIX slots, all the HD
video options, etc. Personally, some day I'd like to have my own
Onyx3900 with 64 x R16K/1GHz CPUs and IR4, just for the hell of it. 😀

Given Onyx3K scales up to 1024 CPUs and 16 parallel gfx pipes in a
single system (max I/O bandwidth of 1.5TB/sec), there's still no x86
system of any kind that can match it for extreme video/imaging tasks.
Even an old Onyx2 can do 40GB/sec disk speed (64-CPU, 8-pipe; Group
Station for Defense Imaging, load and display a 67GB 2D satellite
image in less than 2 seconds).

On the other hand, these old SGIs are huge, and yes indeed SGI did
not move into GPU-accelerated tasks, except for ARB imaging with the
OGL extensions which has been supported before PCs even had 3D gfx.
The fun is just being able to get hold of such systems and mess
around with them. 😎 I know someone who bought a 24-CPU Onyx IR
rack for just 50 UKP, complete with Sirius Video. It's amazing what
hobbyists can get hold of now, eg. a guy in CA has his own quad-500MHz
Onyx2 with InfiniteReality4 (10GB VRAM, 1GB texture RAM) and he also
has a quad-1GHz Tezro V12.

Btw, SGI does offer RASC blades for custom ASIC acceleration of
codes which can offer speed gains way beyond GPU acceleration. I doubt
they're cheap though. :|


> What killed IRIX was the rising talent of NVIDIA and ATI (which
> disrupted the SGI's stronghold on graphics) and the AMD
> Opteron/Athlon64 (which disrupted SGI's stronghold on computation,

Yup. NVIDIA opened a recruitment office opposite SGI's HQ. SGI lost
its key gfx staff to NVIDIA, and some of them moved again later to
ATI, so SGI's legacy has been thoroughly spread around (very ironic).
The original Geforce256 pretty much is a IR gfx pipe, just with all
the fancy stuff removed and shrunk to a single chip on a modern
process (check the GLperf specs, they're identical).


> and ultimately led Intel to drop the Pentium4 architecture for the
> Core architecture). ...

In the same way, SGI lost its key CPU design people to Intel in the
winter of 1996/7. Big salaries on offer which SGI could never match
(I knew someone on the R10K design team). As a result, some of SGI's
ideas can now be found in IA64.

I was never keen on Intel's CPUs, they always seemed to lag behind
somewhat, but Core2 is excellent. I plan on buying an i7 system
in about 6 months' time.


> ... With the economies of scale of consumer products,
> SGI simply could not compete. Today, SGI survives only as a
> supercomputing vendor with fast interconnects.

They do have good products today with respect to supercomputers and
storage, but they're certainly not the innovative gfx/desktop company
they once were (plethora of mistakes were made over the years). It's
been left to the hobbyist community to push things along where
possible now, eg. modding O2 up to 600MHz, though most efforts go into
maintaining up to date Linux freeware on SGIs (eg. Firefox is currently
up to 2.0.0.18):

http://www.nekochan.net/downloads.php

SGI does offer powerful x86 workstations (up to 8 quad-core Opterons,
up to 8 x NVIDIA Quadro boards, up to 256GB RAM), but they're just
rebadged BOXX systems.

SGI once considered entering the consumer desktop gfx market (respun
MaxIMPACT) which would have been awesome, but it didn't happen - too
many didn't want to dilute the ego-boosting mega-bucks markets of
defense, oil/gas, automotive, etc. Sales reps didn't want to lose
their huge commissions on big sales. Pity, it could have boosted
desktop PC gfx speed by an order of magnitude overnight.


> The nice thing is that the 8-core 3.2GHz Mac Pro gives you the same
> responsiveness that SGI's were famous for. It's a really satisfying
> feeling. ...

That's good to hear!


> ... Most IRIX-exclusive apps have mostly gone to Linux.

Very true. One movie company I know of (MPC in London) has hundreds
of Linux-based HP and BOXX systems for use with Flame, and more than
nine hundred Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers for rendering (dual
quad-core XEON 3.2GHz, 32GB RAM), running RHEL and other variants of
Linux.

I'm sure Core i7 systems will be widely adopted by movie studios
given its excellent animation rendering performance. With NUMA
support being added to i7, wouldn't surprise me if SGI uses it for
its next-gen shared-memory products.

Ian.