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Check out DEC/Compaq WRL's factoid

not as much of a UI...

Digital could, look where it go them.

-joev

Do you want great clustering? Use VMS, nothing beats it for clustering. The UI sucks, its a pain to admin, but the clustering gives your tons of power. Most clustering uses custom software, you can just as easily right that custom software for VMS as you could for UNIX.

You are correct that nothing beats OpenVMS for true clustering. VMS was first with clustering, and it is still far ahead of the pack thanks to Galaxy technology. However, I have to disagree with a few of your points.

As far as UI is concerned, it has the same interfaces as *nix - X-Window and CLI, and the DCL CLI is far easier and more intuitive than any *nix shell. Also, I find OpenVMS systems far easier to manage than *nix, due both to its well thought-out design and to the power of clustering. Managing 200 clustered systems is no more difficult than managing two thanks to clustering.

Of course, with OpenVMS you lose one of the factors the original poster was looking for - low cost. OpenVMS base licences are pricey to begin with, and cluster licences are stratospheric. That's why only the big boys like banks, credit unions, stock exchanges, and semiconductor fabs use OpenVMS. (Most microprocessor fab lines, including Intel's, are controlled by OpenVMS systems.) These are businesses where downtime costs serious money.

I also have a serious beef with people referring to Beowulf and its ilk as "clusters." It is not. Such technologies are examples of massively parallel distributed computing systems, not clusters. For crying out loud, they don't even have a distributed lock manager, or an equivalent to MSCP disk serving (NSF doesn't even remotely come close). And don't even get me started on the 2-node failover crap that Microsoft is calling NT Clustering...

Sincerely,
an OpenVMS System Manager who is severely irritated by all of these pretenders to the throne...

OpenVMS FAQ

Do you want great clustering? Use VMS, nothing beats it for clustering. The UI sucks, its a pain to admin, but the clustering gives your tons of power. Most clustering uses custom software, you can just as easily right that custom software for VMS as you could for UNIX.

You are correct that nothing beats OpenVMS for true clustering. VMS was first with clustering, and it is still far ahead of the pack thanks to Galaxy technology. However, I have to disagree with a few of your points.

As far as UI is concerned, it has the same interfaces as *nix - X-Window and CLI, and the DCL CLI is far easier and more intuitive than any *nix shell. Also, I find OpenVMS systems far easier to manage than *nix, due both to its well thought-out design and to the power of clustering. Managing 200 clustered systems is no more difficult than managing two thanks to clustering.

Of course, with OpenVMS you lose one of the factors the original poster was looking for - low cost. OpenVMS base licences are pricey to begin with, and cluster licences are stratospheric. That's why only the big boys like banks, credit unions, stock exchanges, and semiconductor fabs use OpenVMS. (Most microprocessor fab lines, including Intel's, are controlled by OpenVMS systems.) These are businesses where downtime costs serious money.

I also have a serious beef with people referring to Beowulf and its ilk as "clusters." It is not. Such technologies are examples of massively parallel distributed computing systems, not clusters. For crying out loud, they don't even have a distributed lock manager, or an equivalent to MSCP disk serving (NSF doesn't even remotely come close). And don't even get me started on the 2-node failover crap that Microsoft is calling NT Clustering...

Sincerely,
an OpenVMS System Manager who is severely irritated by all of these pretenders to the throne...

OpenVMS FAQ

Do you want great clustering? Use VMS, nothing beats it for clustering. The UI sucks, its a pain to admin, but the clustering gives your tons of power. Most clustering uses custom software, you can just as easily right that custom software for VMS as you could for UNIX.

You are correct that nothing beats OpenVMS for true clustering. VMS was first with clustering, and it is still far ahead of the pack thanks to Galaxy technology. However, I have to disagree with a few of your points.

As far as UI is concerned, it has the same interfaces as *nix - X-Window and CLI, and the DCL CLI is far easier and more intuitive than any *nix shell. Also, I find OpenVMS systems far easier to manage than *nix, due both to its well thought-out design and to the power of clustering. Managing 200 clustered systems is no more difficult than managing two thanks to clustering.

Of course, with OpenVMS you lose one of the factors the original poster was looking for - low cost. OpenVMS base licences are pricey to begin with, and cluster licences are stratospheric. That's why only the big boys like banks, credit unions, stock exchanges, and semiconductor fabs use OpenVMS. (Most microprocessor fab lines, including Intel's, are controlled by OpenVMS systems.) These are businesses where downtime costs serious money.

I also have a serious beef with people referring to Beowulf and its ilk as "clusters." It is not. Such technologies are examples of massively parallel distributed computing systems, not clusters. For crying out loud, they don't even have a distributed lock manager, or an equivalent to MSCP disk serving (NSF doesn't even remotely come close). And don't even get me started on the 2-node failover crap that Microsoft is calling NT Clustering...

Sincerely,
an OpenVMS System Manager who is severely irritated by all of these pretenders to the throne...

OpenVMS FAQ

I think what the people behind the Linux for Psion PDAs have in mind is that they really like the form factor and keyboard of these little and very portable devices. They really don't want an organizer - they want a Linux portable that fits in your shirt pocket.

In addition, the porting experience will prove helpful in designing future PDAs possibly based on Linux, such as the Itsy (BTW, I saw Itsy 2 in action at the International Symposium on Wearable Computing 99 - it's smaller than the original Itsy and runs X. I think Linux does have a future on palmtop-sized devices as well.)

I agree with you, Linux is great on the desktop, though there will need to be made a lot of work to make Linux the best, especially in the user interfaces. My personal preference of course, but I find almost any other OS desktop to be more comfortable than KDE, Gnome or any other window manager.

...that Penguin Computing still sells AMD systems; Compaq sells Alphas running Linux; Apple still sells PowerPC systems that are Linux-compatible; and that you can still by SPARC stations from Sun or for cheap from many auction houses and hardware resellers.


The Kulturwehrmacht

I believe that [SMP] was a term introduced by Intel,

Possibly, but I seem to remember hearing the term before x86 MP systems were common (although they date back at least as far as the Sequent Symmetry, so they do go back a while).

and I don't think that other multi-CPU architectures are described with this acronym, but I could very well be wrong.

Perhaps Digital^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCompaq don't say "SMP", but they sure say "symmetric multiprocessing" (admittedly, not "symmetrical", if one wants to be fussy) on the Digital^H^H^H^H^H^H^HTru64 UNIX home page.

I also believe that the 390 architecture is massively parallel but not really symmetrical.

There exist S/390 machines that have a lot of processors, but the Multiprise 3000 "enterprise servers" (every time I hear some marketoon say "enterprise", I wonder whether they intend to install the "enterprise" product in question on the bridge of NCC-1701) start out as uniprocessors and go up to big honking two-way systems.

I also have the impression that the MP S/390's are "really symmetrical", in the sense that there aren't particular S/390 processors dedicated to specific functions.

As another poster mentioned that the 390 can have various CPU modules which might not even run the same instruction sets.

I suspect he's thinking of I/O processors, e.g. the processors that run the channel controllers (which I wouldn't be surprised to hear were PowerPCs these days), the communication controllers, etc. - the processors that run the applications, and the bulk of the OS, are S/390s, as far as I know.

var year = today.getYear();
if (year < 100){
year += 1900;
}
return(this_month[month]+" "+day+", "+year);
}
// rev03.29.1999 -- DO NOT MODIFY! -- End date display function with y2k compatibility

I played with this a couple of years ago. There was (probably still is) a PDP-11 emulator you could download from ftp.dec.com. With the provided disk images, you could run V7 UNIX. I played with it for a while; I was able to log in, wrote a little C program using ed, and then compile and run it. Here, I think I found the link! (ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/sim/).

Key stretching is also not the only way to increase the workfactor for dictionary searches on passwords. See Str engthening passwords for another approach.

To get back to the original poster's problem: I'd introduct client-side certificates first (to keep random people from connecting to the server), and worry about SRP or cryptocards later.

If you actually want the answer to "what features does it have," go download the free 75+ page paper examining commercial UNIX features from D.H. Brown Associates. Click on "1998 report (download PDF)." It's a little old, but quite thorough if you want to know more about Tru64 (and other $$$ UNIX) features. I think they have another white paper focusing just on the improvements in the newer Tru64 5.0 release somewhere on Compaq's website. Search, search, search... ok, here's more on Tru64 v5.0 features from them.

--LP

We've got almost 40 years until the end of time as we know it. (or until 64-bit Unix, whichever comes first.) Actually, 64-bit UNIX already exists... Digital UNIX, now known as Tru64 UNIX. -t

x2x is at here and x2vnc is located here

If your employer still insists on numbering your PC's just do it in a different language (Babelfish might be helpful here). That way, it sounds cooler, and is at least slightly educational, which you can challenge your boss with if he dost protest too much. And while you're at it, you might as well choose names from any other word in foreign languages, occasionally sneaking in "merde" or "puta". Too bad we can't use Cyrillic, ÁÅÒÏÆÌÏÔ would be a good one...

Dill, Gherkin, Vlasic, etc.
see this if you don't understand.
^. .^

I followed m3.org to the standard interface source. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears the only introspection is in support of the compiler (no runtime access to methods by name), and there seems to be no security at all. IMHO Smalltalk was a much larger influence on Java (at least those proprietary binaries were portable to a few supported platforms, and the runtime is even more powerful).

It's the only UI lib I know of that doesn't have problems with UI updates outside of the event thread. A multithreaded UI could be very cool, indeed.

You can have that UI lib today, care you use a somewhat non-standard programming language. Go look at Modula 3. I think it is an open source system, but I do not know to what extent it is compatible with the GPL.


Lars

--

See http://www.research.digital.com/wrl/itsy/

--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

1. Yahoo!
   
2. altavista.digital.com (huh? what's with the old addy?)
   
3. www.metacrawler.com

If you ask Google "What the best operating system in the world?", and all of a sudden the link order changes:

1. Welcome to Microsoft's Homepage
2. The Linux Home Page
3. The FreeBSD Project

1. Yahoo!
2. altavista.digital.com (huh? what's with the old addy?)
3. www.metacrawler.com

Google's team may have been being just a bit silly, but OTOH, they can't make a handler for every possible approach to the questions they want to answer differently.

Looking for sense in search engine data and results is like making a psychoanalysis of an IRC bot.

(What I'd like to know is...where can I get the One True Unix all these variants are varying from?)

I suppose System V Release 2 or so could also be thought of as the UNIX most commercial UNIXes these days derive from, either directly or indirectly, although SVR2's APIs, as noted, largely resemble a superset of V7, with some PWBisms, and some other additions, e.g. shared memory, and some changes, e.g. a different TTY driver "ioctl" interface.

SCO's only charging USD 100 for the license, it appears - and they also may "waive the license fee for a limited number of deserving applicants", where they suggest that "deserving" may include " student, unemployed, disabled, financially challenged, etc."

The sources are, of course, to PDP-11 UNIXes, so to actually run them you'd need a PDP-11, or a PDP-11 simulator.

It took some digging around, but I finally found some price information on the AlphaServer 800 (I really wish companies wouldn't be so coy about their prices... (no, I do not want to fill in a form so that you're sales people can call me back). Anyway, it looks like it's around $7000 (as of January). But the specs are 500Mhz, 64Mb, and a 4.3 Gb drive. If you want it configured with some real memory I would guess it's going to be an extra $1500 for 256Mb.
Press release, prices of AlphaServers

Maybe I'm confused, but isn't this still kind-of pricey? Compare that to these guys, who've got a 256Mb alpha machine with a 9Gb drive listed for less that $3000:
SWT Digital Alpha Linux System
Or course, this is technically a "workstation" rather than a "server". But I don't understand what exactly it is that you get when you ask for server hardware, except a ten grand price tag.

It took some digging around, but I finally found some price information on the AlphaServer 800 (I really wish companies wouldn't be so coy about their prices... (no, I do not want to fill in a form so that you're sales people can call me back). Anyway, it looks like it's around $7000 (as of January). But the specs are 500Mhz, 64Mb, and a 4.3 Gb drive. If you want it configured with some real memory I would guess it's going to be an extra $1500 for 256Mb.
Press release, prices of AlphaServers

Maybe I'm confused, but isn't this still kind-of pricey? Compare that to these guys, who've got a 256Mb alpha machine with a 9Gb drive listed for less that $3000:
SWT Digital Alpha Linux System
Or course, this is technically a "workstation" rather than a "server". But I don't understand what exactly it is that you get when you ask for server hardware, except a ten grand price tag.

I will not buy this record -- it is scratched!

I want to fondle your bum!

Mein Luftkissenfahrzeug ist voll von den Aalen.

Je veux au fondle votre sans valeur!

(courtesy of babelfish, obviously)

Unfortunately, Alphas have a reputation of being refridgerator-sized machines with

• AlphaLinux.Org
  A good starting place. They have tons of links to vendors, list-archives, news, FAQ's, etc.
• DCG Inc.
  I've had good luck/great service from these guys. Alpha pricing starts at $1295 for a 533-mhz bare-bones kit.
• Compaq's DS10 (21264-500mhz)
  The 466mhz model does over twice as well as a G4 in SPECfp. I seem to remember stumbling across a sale (from Compaq) for these little monsters for $2999, though I can't find the link now.
• Microway
  Never dealt with them personally, but they have fast machines and a all-around good reputation. They also sell quadputers and compilers
• eBay
  You can often find cheap Alpha hardware on eBay. Over 6 months ago, I put together a PC164-500/64mb system for about $600. Read the AlphaLinux.Org FAQ's, HOWTO's and HCL before you buy anything.

For reference, here are a few (single-cpu) spec*95 figures... (mostly from spec.org)
INT- FP-- processor
20.3 13.3 Mac G3/466mhz
22.3 15.1 Intel P-III/550mhz
21.4 20.4 G4-450 Mhz 7400
16.2 23.9 UltraSparc/450mhz
18.0 27.0 Alpha 21164/600mhz (very old now)
24.6 47.9 Alpha 21264/466mhz (new "low-end")
32.1 53.7 Alpha UP2000/667mhz

Dell:

http://www.idg.net/crd_ibm_dell_9-126 405.html


http://www.dell.com/linux/press.htm

SGI:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/3 1/ns-9268.html

IBM:


http://www4.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,416 4,2267514,00.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/990930 -000020.html

Compaq:


http://www.digital.com/inFORM/issues/issue27/ln0 2-linux-story.htm

Intel:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/3 2/ns-9301.html


http://www.linuxia64.com/

Fujitsu:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/990929 -000017.html

Microsoft:

http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departm ents/nt/bugs.shtml

http://support.micro soft.com/support/kb/articles/Q150/7/34.ASP

http://support.micro soft.com/support/kb/articles/Q194/8/34.ASP

http://support.micro soft.com/support/kb/articles/Q224/7/93.ASP

Other side: HP:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990920- 000020.html

This is the newest encarnation of the world-beating clustering technology that everybody is trying to copy. Shared everything, multiple OS instances in the same box, dynamically reassignable memory/CPU between instances, seemless clustering. Read the Galaxy overview here. VMS has been doing clustering since 1985 better than any Unix does it today and it's improved a lot since then. Yet somehow, OpenVMS gets the rap as being outmoded.

Disclosure statement: Yes, I am a Compaq employee. No, I'm not speaking for Compaq.

At least one member of Transmeta's hardware team used to work at DEC WRL, which issued that famous technical note on electric pickles. Transmeta could have hired him for his pickle know-how, which when added to Linus' lutefisk background may give us another hint towards Transmeta's plan for world domination. ellbee

xFS is here (with source). An interesting project is Frangipa ni, but it is not available to the unwashed Linux masses. :-/

http:/ /ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/info/semiconductor/li terature/cmpwrgd.pdf

The pa rent web page also has a bunch of data sheets, manuals and handbooks.

Enjoy (and don't ask me about the space in the link above, I don't know how that happened).

http:/ /ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/info/semiconductor/li terature/cmpwrgd.pdf

The pa rent web page also has a bunch of data sheets, manuals and handbooks.

Enjoy (and don't ask me about the space in the link above, I don't know how that happened).

You can also look over Intel's site, and see how many products they sell that include Windows drivers, but not Linux drivers, and Intel doesn't (yet) have a site like Compaq's Linux Site or SGI's Linux Site.

I am simply pointing out that Compaq is acknoledging Linux, and the comparison between Compaq and Intel doesn't automatically make Intel look like it's supporting Linux and Compaq doesn't really care.

GCC/EGCS is acceptable on x86 hardware, it's doing "ok." But, Alpha/Linux is still not as powerful of a platform as Alpha/Tru64. I do hope GCC/EGCS narrows the margin at some point in the future. But bashing Compaq isn't going to help. Compaq may be in a position to help GCC by simply donating some hardware to developers. But if they get an "unfriendly" responce from the Linux community, it would be unlikely that they would want to help.

Wait...

• Intel sells thier compiler == good
• Compaq ports thier compiler to Linux == bad?

I think Compaq is a step ahead of Intel in the Linux compiler area.... I don't understand why you would want to bash them for it, and say Intel is so great because they support GCC vaporware for Merced vaporware on paper.

2. GRANT:

Compaq Computer Corporation ("Compaq") grants you the right to use the Software solely for testing and evaluation. The Software shall not be used for any other purpose and you agree to destroy or erase all copies of the Software upon Compaq's release of the code in final form.

You may copy the Software into the local memory or storage device of any number of computers for your testing and evaluation. The number of computers must be identified in the upcoming screen. You may make archival or back-up copies of the Software.

3. COPYRIGHT

The Software is protected by copyright laws and international treaties. Your use of the Software and associated documentation is subject to the applicable copyright laws and the express rights and restrictions of these License Agreement.

4. RESTRICTIONS

You may not rent, lease, or otherwise transfer the Software. You may not make the Software available over the internet or similar networking technology. You may not remove any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notices from the Software or the media. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software, except to the extent Compaq cannot prohibit such acts by law.

-jwb

Check out the Alpha site.

You can read the slides for yourself, but all that needs to be said is an estimated SPECint of 75 and a SPECfp of 120 (the best now is like, 30 and 60).

At those rates, who needs hardware acceleration for Quake?!

Alpha 21364: A Scalable Single-chip SMP

Alpha OEM

Alpha 21364: A Scalable Single-chip SMP

Alpha OEM

Check out OpenVMS Galaxies. An integration of clustering and SMP that allows you to take advantage of the best of both!

OpenVMS also has the same superior language compilers as Tru64.

2. What kind of performance do they get compared to something like the Athlon?
8. Where can I get one?
Actually, there's a couple of other vendors that you should be ableto get one from, VA Linux comes to mind a s possibily. API may have a list ofvendors on their site, but I'm not sure.

As far as performance goes, the '264s are todays king-of-the-heap for numerical (FP-intensive) computation, but you definitely want DEC (Compaq)'s Alpha compilers (with Linux versions now available for beta-test-- because they use the Alpha predicated instructions (and some other technical stuff about bit-alignment vs. byte/word alignment in "gcc), they will perform 20-30% better than EGCS gcc, which itself will do much better on Alphas than the previous "standard" gcc 2.7.x or 2.8.x (the latest 2.9.5 is egcs gcc).

Goody suggested:
Get someone like the people who make VMWare to get Win9* to run on Alpha and start packaging RedHat on Alpha machines.

VMWare? Why bother? Compaq now owns the original translate-on-the-fly Windows emulator, DEC's excellent FX!32. All others are pale imitations.

The trouble is that DEC had a sever case of craniorectal insertion (I know, I worked with them on two horribly mismanaged Alpha projects.) To this day Compaq tries to charge more for DEC Unix than a high-end workstation hardware costs. They just don't grasp the importance of GIVING AWAY the FX!32 software as the only way to bootstrap their hardware sales.

Tragedy. In the Greek sense.

There is!! you can download em86 from the following URL. It's been around for a while. ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/Linux-Alpha /em86 hope this helps all of you out there with those amazing alphas!

Why not try a Compaq DS10 or DS20 with Tru64 UNIX as it comes with a ton of Open Source stuff (with binaries) and kicks the crap out of any NT solution?

I've seen mail servers based around them that are cheap to put together and have excellent performance in terms of POP3, IMAP, and Sendmail applications. Check out this URL for the description of the software and this URL for the boxes themselves.

Why not try a Compaq DS10 or DS20 with Tru64 UNIX as it comes with a ton of Open Source stuff (with binaries) and kicks the crap out of any NT solution?

I've seen mail servers based around them that are cheap to put together and have excellent performance in terms of POP3, IMAP, and Sendmail applications. Check out this URL for the description of the software and this URL for the boxes themselves.

Also from Compaq (DEC) SRC:
Web Archeology
Mercator Web Crawler

Also from Compaq (DEC) SRC:
Web Archeology
Mercator Web Crawler

Also from Compaq (DEC) SRC:
Web Archeology
Mercator Web Crawler

So the fact that they're going to be an exhibitor at the Atlanta Linux Showcase means that they don't support Linux?

What about the Active Answers for ISPs running Linux on Compaq hardware?

Or the guide they published to help install Linux and set up the web server?

Or the Alpha Linux support?

It looks to me like Compaq does support Linux. I don't think that they're preinstalling it right now, but they are supporting it, and are even setting up call in tech support..

Am I the only one who remembers that timeless classic, "Characterization of Organic Illumination Systems?" Also from Digital/Compaq's Western Research Laboratory, but a little less subtle, dated April 1, 1989. :)

http://www.research.digital.com/wrl/techreports/ht ml/TN-13/

The closest shipping match to the Itsy are the Casio E-15 and E-100; with 69MHz/131MHz CPUs and 16M of RAM, they're somewhat larger machines than the 8M 486SX/25 I bought to run Linux 0.12, and you can get larger CompactFlash cards (IDE interface internally) than the 60M SCSI disk that was home for a few years. Both Casios are a bit bigger than the Palm III, although I suppose you could get an Everex Freestyle if you wanted the exact size.

If Digital---uh, I mean Compaq---had seeded the right places with proto hardware, I think the excitement about this project would be more justified. I'm glad they're finally releasing their port (dunno where, but this slide has it as a bullet); if nothing else, it will make work on other Linux PDA environments easier. But the commercial marketplace is serving up almost everything the Itsy hardware has except the prototyping ability today. That's where to funnel all that nervous energy you get when you think about how cool it would be to have a Linux PDA.