SGI, others embracing Linux

TitanII writes "ZDNet News has an article about SGI switching to Linux. " The article itself talks about the switchover going on in many of the major tech firms-SGI isn't actually replacing Irix, but is making Linux a major offering across their platforms.

Comments

Linux software was simply better

[hawk]

Uhh, yeah. That's why I don't have a fleet of old macintoshes dating from 1984 to 1994. Wnd why I don't have multiple purchased copies of word, excel, foxpro, billing software, bankruptcy software, and gaggles more that I can't think of. All told, several hundred to a couple of thousand dollars a year on software.

I stuck with mac's to continue using word 5.1, as 6+ femoved features that I depended upon (reasonable equation editing, usable mailmerge). Then I stumbled across Lyx, and it's equation facitilies.

While I would probably have purchased an X86 with windows by then if word hadn't changed from an excellent program to a disaster, price and ideology had *nothing* to do with my switching to linux. I bought the linux box because what lyx could do was flatly better then what was available for mac or windows. The part about never crashing (a year and a half on this machine, and another year or two on another cobbled from spare parts before that, though macbsd did kernel-panic once in the several months I used it) is a *bonus*.

I am not anti-microsoft. As an anti-trust attorney, I think they're in deep trouble, but that's a legal issue. I'm not even averse to buying their software. But the last software I saw from them that was worth paying for was word5.1 and excel 4. Nothing I've seen from them since has been worthwhile, even if it were free.

Is the death of choice a good thing?

[Melbert]

Cheering for the fact that SGI may have "knuckled under" may be a premature thing to do.

Is it ever a good thing when there are fewer choices in the world? If SGI eventually throws in the towel with Irix, it just means that Linux is doing what Microsoft hopes it will do:

Killing off all the commercial Unices.

I have grown beyond an "anti-Microsoft" stance to the point where I feel that it's just silly to base your core philosopy on 'anti-' anything as the starting point. Diversity is good. That means it's bad whenever any OS is driven from the marketplace. Including OSes you can't buy from Cheapbytes for $1.99.

The "Open Source" movement isn't fascist, unless it starts claim it is the ONLY model for software development. Then it gets frighteningly similar to one-party Communism (some theorize that the only way Communism can ever succeed is if it takes over the whole world, and that this fact leads to it's defeat) I'm not trying to slam "open source" initiatives, because it can be and is a good thing at present. It's NOT EVER going to take over the entire market. Watch out for people who claim it is. They're the Lenin/Stalin types humanity always has to watch out for.

SGI smart move!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think about it they have been planning this a while. Some of thier internal developers have been submitting Kernel patches for a while. The day the 2.2 kernel hit the mirrors support for the Visual Workstation. Now you can run X on the VWS (unaccelerated). They release GLX as Open Source then with redhat started funding precision insight to developent key parts of the new Xfree86 4.0.

SGI really understands Linux and OpenSource and is one of the Greatest Things to happen to linux.

With all that said do you still wonder why Micros~1 is getting scared.

Let me break this down.

Many years ago UNIX started fragmenting. Vender's started maintaining there own versions of UNIX. Do you realize how much this costs? big bucks. Imagine spending some money and porting some inhouse (proven and feature rich) to an OpenSource platform with most basic (if not all) system tools. This can really help SGI focus on what they do best. Incredible hardware.

But it may take a while.

Inorder for them to relase alot of thier code it has to cleaned up (remove parts licensed by other companys... if nes.). I heard this is moving right along.


I don't know that is just my opinion i could be wrong.

Because Linux and SGI don't compete.

[Ami Ganguli]

Linux (a piece of software) doesn't compete with SGI (a hardware manufacturer that happens to write software). Continued development of Irix just eats at SGI's bottom line. If they can get a high performance OS more cheaply by contributing to Linux, then it makes good business sense to do so. I know they're not abandoning Irix at this point, but they will when Linux offers everthing Irix does (say three years?).

By adopting Linux, SGI is 1/strengthening Linux on high-end hardware, 2/adding to the momentum of the Linux bandwagon, 3/providing more installed seats for Linux which means more applications will be ported 4/making expensive SGI boxes a natural migration path for cheap Intel boxes.

The only major Unix vendor that doesn't stand to benefit from the broad acceptance of Linux is SCO. And, surprise, they are the only major Unix vendor that hasn't come out in support of Linux. I have no idea how they think they're going to compete in the long term.

... Ami.