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All 500 of the World's Top 500 Supercomputers Are Running Linux (zdnet.com)
Freshly Exhumed shares a report from ZDnet: Linux rules supercomputing. This day has been coming since 1998, when Linux first appeared on the TOP500 Supercomputer list. Today, it finally happened: All 500 of the world's fastest supercomputers are running Linux. The last two non-Linux systems, a pair of Chinese IBM POWER computers running AIX, dropped off the November 2017 TOP500 Supercomputer list. When the first TOP500 supercomputer list was compiled in June 1993, Linux was barely more than a toy. It hadn't even adopted Tux as its mascot yet. It didn't take long for Linux to start its march on supercomputing.
From when it first appeared on the TOP500 in 1998, Linux was on its way to the top. Before Linux took the lead, Unix was supercomputing's top operating system. Since 2003, the TOP500 was on its way to Linux domination. By 2004, Linux had taken the lead for good. This happened for two reasons: First, since most of the world's top supercomputers are research machines built for specialized tasks, each machine is a standalone project with unique characteristics and optimization requirements. To save costs, no one wants to develop a custom operating system for each of these systems. With Linux, however, research teams can easily modify and optimize Linux's open-source code to their one-off designs. The semiannual TOP500 Supercomputer List was released yesterday. It also shows that China now claims 202 systems within the TOP500, while the United States claims 143 systems.
From when it first appeared on the TOP500 in 1998, Linux was on its way to the top. Before Linux took the lead, Unix was supercomputing's top operating system. Since 2003, the TOP500 was on its way to Linux domination. By 2004, Linux had taken the lead for good. This happened for two reasons: First, since most of the world's top supercomputers are research machines built for specialized tasks, each machine is a standalone project with unique characteristics and optimization requirements. To save costs, no one wants to develop a custom operating system for each of these systems. With Linux, however, research teams can easily modify and optimize Linux's open-source code to their one-off designs. The semiannual TOP500 Supercomputer List was released yesterday. It also shows that China now claims 202 systems within the TOP500, while the United States claims 143 systems.
There is no second reason.
Linux is not used because it's better, it's used because it is cheaper.
In the end, cheaper almost always wins over better.
Unix never made inroads on the desktop.
This might actually be harmful if people think Linux is complicated or designed for heavy hardware they may not consider it for desktops and use cases involving desktop apps.
Linux has been ready for the desktop since about 1999, before that there were dependency issues and hardware wasn't always supported. Now hardware is more likely to be better supported on Linux than on Windows. I'm writing this on Windows but that's only because Windows came on this machine, I'll be installing Linux when I have a week of downtime.
Enlightenment is probably the best looking desktop software anywhere, it's customizability makes it hard to include with distros but it should be considered as evidence that it's not user-friendliness or beauty holding Linux back.
I think it's a bit sad to see Linux software becoming overly simplified in the wake of Apple's success the way other software is.
Linux needs to remain the enthusiast and expert operating system more than it needs broad acceptance. Look what happened with the internet, Linux is great without ads, malware and other problems I associate with popularity.
That said Linux skills are still hugely undervalued and not taught in schools which needs to change. A Linux machine is still your best bet that your machine will still be runnning with data and apps updated but not broken after 10-15 years.
And these piece of shit Linux nodes fail all the time.
That must be why all 500 are running Linux - for the great failure rate. Or maybe you're wrong.
How far has the discussion quality fallen? Apparently this low, even without a political bent.
So, the Top 500 list of computers was dominated by many Variants of Unix, with a little sprinkle of other weird stuff (among those, VMS). Which is not a monoculture
Then, as the other weird stuff waned, Windows took it's place (for a short while). Not directly as a replacement of course, but rather as a percentage of Top500 systems.
On the other side of the fence, Linux began to take increasign market share of the Top500 because of low cost, shallow learning curve from *nix, and posibility to modify source code, in an accelerated path to become a monoculture (at least where the Top500 is concerned).
And now, finally, we are on a monoculture in the Top500, with Linux all the way in the Top500... No *BSD, no AIX, HP-UX, or Solaris. Just Linux all the way.
Better not catch anyone complaining about Chrome Monoculture, Windows Monoculture, or Android monoculture! M'kay? ;-)
I think the reason it's become a Linux "monoculture" is that it isn't really a monoculture.
Top-500 should be an area that's amendable to variety. Any one project is big enough that some serious customization is going to occur, so traditionallyany one OS could focus on a specific feature set and nab themselves a bit of the market. That's why the big Unixes co-existed for so long, if your problem was a round hole you'd grab the Unix that looked the most like a round peg, and if you had a square hold you'd grab one that looked like a square peg.
But Linux is modifiable, so if you need a round peg you can make it a round peg. If you really need a specific feature or optimization you can write a kernel patch. That doesn't matter for the consumer market but it matters for the top-500 list.
I wonder what the future of the BSDs is, they have cool communities but I'm not really sure where their niche is.
I stole this Sig
Anybody still believe Linus Torvalds about how Linux was just for fun?
Of course. Linux was just for fun; now he makes a living out of it. A person's motivations for doing something don't have to remain exactly the same for the whole time they do it.
...it's quite literately the only logical choice
Oh I know, right? But the big fact you danced around is, Linux is just better than the others. It's faster and more reliable. Otherwise top 500 would not use it. Like, they tried to use Windows, they really did. Microsoft was paying academic institutions to install it and providing teams of free engineers. Still didn't do it. Why? Windows can't handle the load, it can't run continuously under load. It just gets more and more unstable then it falls over. Even when it does stay up, it can't touch the storage, scheduling or memory management efficiency of Linux.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The other big logical reason is licensing. No one is ever going to pay for the required Windows or MacOS server licenses for installations of this size when there is free (as in beer) software available. They'd rather put that money into other parts of the project (more cores etc.) to eek out even more performance.
It has nothing to do with not being able to handle the load. It has everything to do with costs. Linux is free. Windows isn't.
If I get you right, You spend all this money on a Supercomputer, so you logically use the cheapest OS out there instead of paid ones that should work better?
Sounds legit.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.