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Finally, It's the Year of the Linux... Supercomputer (zdnet.com)
Beeftopia writes: From ZDNet: "The latest TOP500 Supercomputer list is out. What's not surprising is that Linux runs on every last one of the world's fastest supercomputers. Linux has dominated supercomputing for years. But, Linux only took over supercomputing lock, stock, and barrel in November 2017. That was the first time all of the TOP500 machines were running Linux. Before that IBM AIX, a Unix variant, was hanging on for dear life low on the list."
An interesting architectural note: "GPUs, not CPUs, now power most of supercomputers' speed."
An interesting architectural note: "GPUs, not CPUs, now power most of supercomputers' speed."
Linus has created literally trillions in economic activity. Singlehanded. But techies worship Musk. Very odd.
... Linux is also taking over the world of IoT.
I don't think that there has ever been another operating system that has been used across such a wide range of systems with such a range of scales.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
I think this has been Linux's special sauce all along. It scales to nearly anything. It runs on:
Desktop computers
Smartphones
Tablets
Smart Watches
Pretty much every kind of IoT Device (Thermostats, AC receptacles, shade controllers)
NAS Servers
Supercomputers
Mainframes
Routers and Switches
Nearly every kind of embedded development board and SoC
Portable media players
Set-top boxes
Blu-Ray players
Home game consoles
Satellites
Test Equipment (Oscilloscopes, Spectrum Analyzers, Signal Generators)
The only places it hasn't made major inroads are in industrial control, SCADA and mission-critical systems, like health care and major financial systems (though NASDAQ runs a bunch of stuff on Gentoo) But it's probably a matter of time.
And congrats to all that support and develop for it, especially one Mr Linus Benedict Torvalds.
Not just very large applications like supercomputers, but very small applications too. Linux runs awesome on my router, phone and android tv box: WRT32X running OpenWrt 18.06 (kernel 4.14), Pixel 2 running Android 8.1 (kernel 4.4), and Mi Box (kernel 4.9).
It's still the medium size applications where there is no traction. Linux needs a unified packaging system, better driver support, and support for key programs like Office and gaming. If PUBG and Overwatch ran in Linux I'd probably run it on my home built rig, but alas, I use Windows 10 because it's actually a great all around OS. Easily the best there is at this medium size level for business/home/laptops.
Let's face it, as bright and influential as Torvalds has been, and continues to be, most people would not rate him highly on the warm and fuzzy scale. He is not a man that seeks approval. He is not a man that wants to be in the spotlight.
In some ways I think he is like Steve Wozniak. Just a shy, quiet but brilliant engineer that would rather just be left alone than doing the cocktail party circuit.
History tends to reward the Musks and Jobs of this world who are very smart in their own right but also very adept at self promotion.
I tend to have more respect for Linus and Woz. They are the men behind the curtain doing all the heavy lifting.
Linus has created literally trillions in economic activity. Singlehanded. But techies worship Musk. Very odd.
Singlehanded?!? I guess, if you ignore all the work done on gcc, glibc, bash, systemd, other system tools, thousands of kernel developer contributors, thousands of people putting together distributions, people writing build systems, multiple languages, hardware manufactures, etc...
Linus work is probably not even 1 millionth of the total work that went into producing your average computer, let alone super computers.
Bitcoin mining is certainly one creative way to help justify for the cost of a supercomputer...
An interesting architectural note: "GPUs, not CPUs, now power most of supercomputers' speed."
Who is this beeftopia guy who is so monumentally ignorant of the history of supercomputing? That's not an "interesting architectural note". That's supercomputing since the very beginning of supercomputing. Supercomputers are supercomputers specifically because they had vector processors, before "GPU" was even a recognizable acronym. When PCs had nothing but framebuffers, supercomputers had vector processors. That was the point of building them. Once the GPU was invented, utilizing them to build a supercomputer was an inevitability.
And get off my lawn!
When was it NOT the year of the Linux supercomputer?
Was pairing your Bluetooth earphones too hard for you or something?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This means exactly nothing for the desktop where it's most craved for.
Why are people confusing hangars of discrete computers that do individual computations with a super computer?
It's interesting that relatively weak CPU coupled with multiple fast vector processors that could do massive parallel calculations was basically the design of the original Cray supercomputers and we're back to that design coupled with fast interconnects to team up many, many nodes. Kinda cool to see that Seymour had it right =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Linus Torvalds didn't work in a vacuum and never claimed to. He got started using a book written by Andy Tanenbaum. He was in the right place at the right time (When the Intel 80386 came out which finally had the hardware support needed for a multi-tasking, demand paging Operating System. And yes, I know it wasn't the first chip to have that, but by then the Intel architecture dominated the market thanks to IBM choosing the Intel 8086 for it's PC, which is a different story, pardon the digression.)
BSD Unix was available for the 80386 and Mr Torvalds said if he'd known about it, he probably wouldn't have written Linux. It boiled down finally to personality. Linus Torvalds welcomed participation by others to improve Linux and was a genial enough leader that he could herd all those cats into working together. Smart people were working on BSD Unix too. But they tended to be elitist and fought among themselves so you ended up having different flavors, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. If you go back through the internet archives, you can even find posts to some of the comp.os newsgroups where they are squabbling and airing their dirty linen in public.
Why did this at least partially hobbyist OS get so popular? I think a lot of it has to do with trust. People are willing to buy supercomputers running linux because they trust linux. They can see the source code; they can see the history, the evolution of it. Part of that trust is due to Linus Torvalds style and personality. That is his contribution. Richard Stallman also made a great contribution with the GNU public license, which Linus Torvalds adopted. Many of those contribution cats would not have joined the herd without the GNU public license which protected other people from appropriating their work. Torvalds and Stallman have their differences, but I don't think Linus Torvalds ever tried to steal Stallman's thunder. Linux distributions depend not only on the kernel which Linus Torvalds wrote the original version of, but also on a lot of software from Stallman's GNU foundation. They also depend on a lot of software from other sources, like the X-Window system. It gets complicated, and maybe people should just admit that it's complicated instead of trying to reduce it all to sound bites.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
I am glad to here it. My physician has advised me that working in a vacuum is bad for your health.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I found the aspie!
Alas, slashdot does not allow one to go back and edit posts. Otherwise I would change my previous post to read "doesn't work in a vacuum (metaphorically speaking)" so as not to confuse readers such as yourself. And you yourself would probably go back and edit your own post to read "glad to hear it" vice "glad to here it".
Those are the breaks.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
See subject: I truly sincerely feel that the actual REAL "mythical/legendary Year of Linux on the Desktop" is going to be a reality soon enough (me saying that after being on MS products from DOS3.3/Win3x/9x/NT/2000/XP/Server2003/7 from 1991-4/2018 is a miracle in & of itself).
* It's gotten to the point of actual desktop elegance & a good solid kernel/core + I just LOVE KDE Plasma OpenGL 3.1 too!
(Lazarus 1.8.2 IDE + FreePascal TRULY ROCK also (all I really need is that & a MINIMAL install of the OS proper itself & I'm good to go BUT the DISCOVER tool's pretty nice as a GUI front to application repositories for things other than what comes w/ the distro FULL install itself as alternates OR new tools one may wish to try/use etc.))
I am also GLAD to see that Linux is doing well on all things out there pretty much (BSD has a foothold in a few areas like Playstations iirc & others too) & nice to see it's "ROCKING THE 'SuperComputerWorld'" (afaik it was already there but I could be off/wrong).
APK
P.S.=> In the end, after trying Linux since Slackware 1.02 in 1994, RedHat in 1999, & Kubuntu 10.10 in 2010? Linux FINALLY "got ahold of me" (after I blew 2 disks in a row, both ~5 yrs. old in an Intel SSD + WD Raptor 10k rpm SATA & messing around in Windows 7 64-bit chopping, of all things, default SCHEDULED TASKS, I cut 1 that runs @ system startup I didn't like, want or NEED but turned out the OS did & she was shot - so I went to reinstall after 4-5++ yrs. outta that install & solid but my Win7 64-bit install media "bit it" after 10++ yrs. so it was TIME TO TRY Linux again - & very, Very, VERY GLAD I did - I like it))... apk
I'll always have fond memories for AIX. It was my first UNIX I played with and learned. My dad worked for IBM and got an older RS/6000 to bring home. Firing that thing up with its stacks of external hard drives was like powering on the space shuttle. That experience allowed me to be the first in my college dorm to have a Linux box up and running. Good times.