PuffinFest at ALS

Chris Beard of The Puffin Group wrote in to say that the birds are partying again. Throughout the week, anyone at ALS will have the opportunity to hack on, or talk to someone hacking on the PA-RISC port of Linux (which is rumoured to boot sash now). The Puffins also sponsored two BOFs today - anyone have a report to give?

Comments

Or run the OpenBSD hppa port ? Free, downloadable.

[Anonymous Coward]

hppa Developers Resource Page

OpenBSD/hppa

hppa@openbsd.org

Progress perhaps.

[Banshee]

Does this mean that PA-RISC is starting to shape up as a possible reality? Being an HP-UX admin I can tell you that the hardware this thing is run on is capable of a lot of good to the Linux world especially in the SMP areas if it is chosen to pursue. Right now the N Class machines are the model for the eventual IA64 deployments on HP servers. This seems like a good opportunity to make a impact quick with porting Linux over to PA-RISC. Thats just my feelings though.

Re:Progress perhaps.

[aithien]

I'm an HP admin and I do most of my coding in
perl. Just the usual writing of tools... It seems
like everytime I want to write a C program
that ops at a system level I get hung up with
problems in the differences in the vastly different models.
I've just been using GCC to most of my C code,
so I have a feeling that the pa-risc port is going
so damn slow because of this. There are a million
different series and they all have different
implementations of their wierd busses and
proprietary crap (everytime you want to use a
struct it's series dependant).

I really doubt this will get past the educational,
unless HP intervenes and provides some tools.

I think they should because my company throws away
HP9000 equipment all the damn time. It costs more
to sell it than the money you get back for it. A
64 meg RAM stick costs 4000 dollars if you need to
repair it... so no company that would be buying
used goods would buy a used HP9000!

unless it suddenly became worth it!

I hated them when I firsted start using them,
but it kinda grows on you. I really like the
keyboards! :-)

Re:Progress perhaps.

[Gill Bates]

Does anyone know how close the port is to being usable? I ask because I have a (possible) opportunity to pick up surplus HP-735. If I could have Linux running on this thing in my basement, I'd be in heaven (20" monitor, yeah :)

HR Puffin' stuff actual URL

[Money__]

The original story pointed to the wrong doc. the press release is here.

I think it's nice to see major companys throwing there name behind Linux and it's cause. HP has over 100,000 employees worldwide and had total revenue of $47.1 billion in its 1998.

In the famous words of many US congressmen, 'a billion here, a billion there, sooner or later, that's real money!'

Re:HR Puffin' stuff actual URL

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and something like $20 billion of that comes from printer consumables (toner and inkjet cartridges, special paper, etc). HP's not a computer company, its an ink company! And no I'm not making this up, exaggerating for effect maybe, but close enough.

hmmm

[Killio]

Does anyone know when it's supposed to be out?

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

yesterday

eleventh post! :)

[Anonymous Coward]

ObQuestion: How much are HP Unix boxes still used out there? Frankly, it's been a long time since I ever came across one of those machines. Do they mostly live in certain industries? Or can one count their sales on their hands?

Re:eleventh post! :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically $250 and up. I can get them for $30 or under, but that's me, not you.

Lets get the party-goers drunk!

[brianm9]

Maybe if they party enough, we can get them drunk enough to give us free equipment :P *evil grin* How about it Rob? Of course you want some equipment. --Brian.

Will PA-RISC systems ever leave the stratosphere?

[Anonymous Coward]

I LOVE HP equipment. The PA-RISC series of chips are very competitive with Alpha and like Alpha, leave everybody else in the dust.

My last admin got a J2240 as a toy (whaddya you need a dual CPU screamerbox to monitor oracle database servers for?) and it was a REALLY nice machine. Too bad it cost in the order of sixty grand.

Re:PuffinFest?

[Anonymous Coward]

ass blowage is obviously what they're puffin' on

Puffin and Carleton U.

[jlcooke]

I know the Puffins. Good buch of guys, great coders, and lovers to booze (scotch) all round. Many of the people in Puff. (1-2 of the co founders) came from Carleton University's Systems and Computer Engineering and EngSoc.

Just a shameless plug for my school. </ALEX_AND_DAVE=IGNORE>

Re:Or run the OpenBSD hppa port ? Free, downloadab

[Zigg]

I was under the impression (from the page) that OpenBSD/hppa isn't really "usable" yet either. Correct me if I'm wrong...

PuffinFest?

[Trepidity]

I first read that as "Puffin' Fest," which would be an interesting title indeed. Puffing on what, one would wonder...

ALS: The First Day of Exhibitions

[rwg]

After surviving an afternoon at the show floor of the Atlanta Linux Showcase, I figured this would be as good a place as any to post a few thoughts about what I saw...

THE GOOD

• LinuxCare's little bootable Linux recovery CD kicks ass. No bigger than a business card, it fits in the 3" diameter groove in CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive trays and has the potential to save your butt when lilo eats itself. They also had some Linux stickers that now adorn the case of my 386... (Yes, it runs Linux.)
• IBM had a presence. Although certainly not the largest or flashiest booth in the show, Quake 3 on a rather large plasma display attracted lots of attention. Dual PII-400 Intellistation + Voodoo 3 3000 + large plasma display. Mmmmmm. Thanks to the guys there for letting me get some game time on that mammoth thang...
• O'Reilly also had a presence, and their trade show pricing kicks much booty. Picked up a few books for 20% off list and got a shirt to boot...
• Mad props to VA Linux Systems for not only having a cool booth and giving away lots of stuff but for supplying the machines used for public Internet access. Their Debian boxed set is pretty cool and sports Learning Debian GNU/Linux from O'Reilly. (Yes, I was one of the people who stood around in line for ten or fifteen minutes to win this...)
• Thanks to the Sun and Rave Systems folks for all the free stuff. Learn to play Quake 2 without cheating before next year's show... :-) (Now where's my complimentary Sparc 5?)

THE BAD

• None of the shirts I got fit. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. I'm 6-foot-3-inches tall and weigh 295 pounds. Show me the big-assed shirts!
• The IBM guys told me that the Showcase had a T-1 connection to the 'Net. I couldn't verify -- the packet loss and latency was horrible on the connection. I'm hoping this is only because lots of geeks were pounding on the connection like a pack of wild monkeys...
• Food choices were few, and lines were long. Within the Galleria, your choices were Subway, some cafe whose name I don't remember, Ruby Tuesday's, and Chick-Fil-A. If you were bold, you could go to the movie theater downstairs and buy a big tub of popcorn. The group I was with walked across the street to another mall and ate at Arby's. Yum... I think.

THE UGLY

• Where the hell were the Slackware people? I wanted Slackware apparel... Hmmph.
• Linux merchandise places came out of the woodworks to hock their goods. Yay capitalism...
• Don't eat at Shoney's. Our group waited over an hour for food before giving up and leaving.

THE REST

• The andover.net/freshmeat.net/slashdot.org booth was smack dab next to the linux.com booth. Taken together, it looked like one big congregation of slackers with laptops. All things considered, however, I wouldn't have minded flopping down on the couch for a rest after walking around for a few hours...
• I will seek revenge against the guy in the Debian shirt who shot me in the arm with a Nerf dart... muahahahaha
• The Debian folks had a Sun Ultra 5 running XaoS, Netscape, and some Tetris clone in separate windows. Just for kicks, I maximized the XaoS window. Can we say slideshow?
• I had nothing interesting enough to trade with the lady at the VA Linux booth, so I didn't get one of those nifty enlightenment shirts. Dammit.
• NetBSD was there. Go figure.

Overall, it was a pretty cool show, but I wish I didn't have the 2-1/2 hour drive. It was put on very professionally and appeared to be very well organized. I was only slightly disappointed that the show wasn't any bigger... The nifty canvas bag attendees got and the included CD made up for that, though.

Re:the chick in the rackspace banner is a cutey pi

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I haven't seen the rackspace ad yet. Should I grease up and keep hitting reload?

Prob. not usable yet, but get HP-UX 10.20 gratis

[Zigg]

I haven't checked up on the port in a few months, but I doubt it's anywhere near as usable as your typical setup. It should pick up steam soon though.

What I would like to tell everyone who has an opportunity to pick up a 9000/7xx machine is to go ahead and do it, because even if it comes with HP-UX 9.xx, you can get an ugprade to HP-UX 10.20 gratis from HP as part of their Y2K program. I "rescued" a 720 from an engineering firm who was "upgrading" to NT and have been happily using it for quite some time now at least as a glorified X terminal for my FreeBSD box. My copy of 10.20 is in the mail. :-) In any event, you can have a very usable system -- and quite possibly learn a bit about other UNIXes (which is a very good thing, IMO) while you wait for the Puffin Group to bring their work to a more usable state.

Grab them while you can! They're really nice boxes.

BOF?

[Hard_Code]

BOF = Bastard Operator From ?

Re:BOF?

[Gill Bates]

BOF = Birds Of a Feather session (kind of an informal meeting on a particular topic)