Slashdot Mirror
Tru64 UNIX for Hobbyists: $99
Anonymous Coward writes "For those of you out there with Alpha hardware, it seems that Compaq is now offering its Tru64 UNIX to 'technology enthusiasts' for a mere $99." A heavily restricted (VERY non-GPL) license is attached to the deal, but it looks like it would be a nice combination toy and "teach yourself commercial UNIX at home" tool.
Let's think about this...
1) Can't take part in cooperative ventures like Distributed.net since the winner receives monetary compensation.
2) Fellow student Jon Doe's programming assignment is due tomorrow but he's having problems. He offers $100 if you'll help him. Too bad the license forbids you from using your Tru64 machine to help. Again, violates the monetary compensation clause.
Then we can branch out into other forms of "compensation, reimbursement or remuneration".
At Linux Expo two years ago, Eric Raymond discussed the motivating factors behind the open source movement. One point he made was that open source authors sometimes receive compensation in the form of fame and notariety. Could this mean that a system under this license couldn't be used to develop open source software? Well, other parties benefit from the work and you could be compensated in the form of fame. Hmm...benefits others and you receive compensation for it. Yep. Violation. I guess you could submit the software under an alias...
Err, no offense but that sounds like FUD; since when is Compaq killing OpenVMS? VMS is the core of the old Digital service business and is still driving a billion or more dollars of Compaq's revenue anually. Compaq Is currently readying the OpenVMS Galaxies architecture and Wildfire systems that it will run on, does that sound like they're killing VMS?
Whoops never mind I see from your website that you migrate customers from VMS to Unix and NT and therefore have a financial interest in convincing people that VMS is being killed.
I browse with my threshold at 2 so I can't read my own comments :-)
I have bought 4 machines from www.lodgepole.com and had EXCELLENT luck with them. They know linux and they know Alpha.
I'm not sure where you get your statement that "AMD performs faster than the Pentium III in almost all tasks." What tasks, exactly?
The Athlon performs well in the all-important task (as far as the Slashdot community is concerned) of not being made by Intel.
NetBSD, dude.
Skip the ports of an Intel OS to the Alpha.
What applications do you run where integer performance is a bottleneck?
Every single application I run. Word processing, browsing, the OS itself, most spreadsheet work, webserving, distributed number crunching bits of Pi.
You seem to misunderstanding what integer performance represents; it does not have to do primarily with integer number crunching. Remember, branching, string manipulation, pointer handling, GUI/pixel operations, are all built entirely out of integer operations. Integer benchmarks such as SPECint95 typically measure all of these and make a good proxy for general purpose computing (CPU) performance.
Unless you are specifically doing intensive loops of floating point math for physics/math/financial number crunching, FP is mostly irrelevant. Even 3D, the one potentially general purpose use for FP, is about equally dependent on integer performance for all the other operations that the app performs (handling input, AI, sound, other app logic, etc.) Not to mention that once you are using a 3D card with a geometry engine (e.g. Nvidia's GeForce 256 or 3Dlabs Oxygen GVX1), FP becomes practically irrelevant again.
Most CAD and financial apps, the bread and butter of RISC workstations, often used fixed point (i.e. integer-based) arithmetic to avoid past processor limitations in floating point performance; one survey I read indicated that CAD code was 70% integer. Obviously analysis jobs like FEA or CFD tend to be floating-point bound.
Admittedly, I don't need a 700 MHz computer these days, so its true that in some sense, integer performance isn't my bottleneck; my network connection is the real bottleneck. But within the PC, integer is far more of a limiting factor than floating point in the vast majority of usage scenarios.
--LP
If you've dealt with NetBSD at all, you'd know that things don't get done unless they're done in an architecture-independent manner. Until XFree86 86s the x86 and uses sane bus abstractions instead of counting on directly diddling the PCI bus, nobody [1] from the NetBSD team is terribly interested in supporting it. The XFree86 team knows that architecture-independence is the way to go, and supposedly v4.0 will be implemented a lot more cleanly.
[1] There are actually some NetBSD guys who'd rather have ``impure'' XFree86 support than none at all, and are working on getting it running under NetBSD/alpha.
NetBSD: the cathedral vs the bizzare.
http://www.testdrive.compaq.com/tru64/index.shtml
---
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Ever hear of posix or xpg? Linux usn't UNIX and the GNU tools are so far away from UNIX that you couldn't possibly pass certification to call it UNIX. The closest tools are those that came with BSD lite. You might as well beat on it for not running win32.
In my case, the tasks I perform that are bottlenecked by the CPU are image manipulation (mainly when applying filters), tetrahedral mesh generation, 3D model viewing/manipulation, 3D games, and mp3 compression.
I think that most people who run mostly integer intensive applications don't even need a PII except in special circumstances. FP performance is the discriminating factor for me.
Motorola has SPEC benchmarks for the G4 on their site. Integer performance is a little better on the G4 than the PIII at the same MHz, and FP is significantly better, but not enough to overcome the difference in clock speed. AltiVec, however, is far superior to MMX and SSE.
Because Compaq owns Digital.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Why not run a multia... they are dirt cheap... not very fast, but what the heck... I use one as my router, web server, DNS, DHCP server... Pretty fun little box (as long as you replace the clock battery :-) Linux runs well on them now. I think slashdot used to be run off of one of them. Now it would get slaughtered though...
Of course, the more software that's available for the Alpha architecture, the better. I think this software is so cheap because UNIX isn't as important as it used to be. My understanding was that UNIX had an edge over linux on these systems because of its highly-optimised, closed-source compilers.
It is also my understanding that the libraries/compilers/etc.. needed are being developed for linux, so perhaps it will be more usefull for scientific applications.
As for the comment made above about whether the Alpha is still the fastest, It is the fastest not just because of the processor, but the EV6 bus. For total system throughput, I don't know of anything that even challenges the Alpha.
Dr. W
I use one with linux... have since RH4.0... its a Dec Multia 166... pretty slow but a lot of fun. Got it for $250 about 3 years ago (24meg of ram and a 340meg scsi disk). It was how I got into Linux.
You pay a hundred bucks and can't use it for commercial purposes? I suppose that running a commrecial website off it, for instance, would be out.
;)
They seem to be forgetting that the competitive free UNIX operating systems are long out of the toy stage. Why pay all that for something whose license not only restricts distribution, reverse engineering and all the usual stuff, but also restricts the product to a hobby horse.
The question I would ask is, does this offer actually contain $100 worth of hobby value? I can see it as being useful to someone who wants to learn the idiosynchrasies of setting up and administering Tru64 for the sake of getting a job, and just knowing the things that are different about product but that's not a pure hobbyist motivation.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if I'm going to run a POSIX shell and play with vi, I can get cheaper satisfaction.
Subtlely faster, if at all, at only ten times the price of the Alpha.
Red Hat on the Alpha works good for me. The only really annoying thing is a lack of a Netscape binary for Alpha Linux.
Hopefully Mozilla will change that.
The responses to this story give a very interesting view of the experience level of most Slashdot users. I think it would make quite an insightful poll to find out how many Slashdot readers have actually ever used a real (i.e. not Linux or pseudoBSD) Unix. With responses like "if you get this, can you run your fav linux games?", "You can get Linux or FreeBSD for nothing, and you get to *keep* your soul.", "Why would anyone pay $99 for a closed-source, unsupported, singl-architecture UNIX?", it really makes me wonder how many of these people had even HEARD of Unix 5 years ago. I especially love that "why would anyone pay $99" arguement... a Unix license used to run in the thousands! I find it so amusing that when Compaq does what is basically a *major favor* for the hobbyist computer user, they get blasted for "not being all cool and open sourced!" by people who more than likely only use their "rad bawXen" for bitchX and don't even know what C code looks like. Honestly, you people have no idea how good you have it nowadays.
People who really mess around with free unixes understand how the underlying architecture works and this knowledge is portable to any commercial unix and even non-unix systems like Windows or MacOS. Anyway, Sun distributes free versions of Solaris (for non-commercial use) which don't come bundled with a compiler (HORROR!) but for which you can easily download gcc binaries. So messing around with a system that you have to pay for to "learn commercial unix" (*cough, cough, barf*) sounds rather nonsensical to me. Not that I hate non-free OSs, mind you. Your opinion may vary from mine, but I'll put money on my prediction that this offer from Compaq won't have too many takers. -nux.
Actually extrapolating G4 from G2 is good since the G4 is an evolution of the 604e just as the G3 was an evolution of the 603
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
They are the ones that own most of the software that makes a "real" Unix system. In fact, they even own the name Unix now. http://www.opengroup.org/
Hey, as I recall, Linux had support for running Tru64 binaries IFF you have a copy (and for those of us who don't want to be sued, a license) of the Tru64 runtime libraries.
If so, does this license give you access to the runtime libraries? This could be a big win, in particular since the Tru64 compilers and JVM's are much better than Linux's.
sigs are a waste of space
Free, free, free, gimme, gimme, gimme, Gnu, gimme, Linux, gimme, Quake, gimme, freebie, freebie, freebie. What a bunch of dorks.
Why does it have this for an icon?
Microway sells a low end Alpha workstation. Take a look at http://www.microway.com/specials/alpha.html#specia l4.
To a shark, you are just another food choice...
In hacker terms, it's somebody you can sue if something goes wrong.
In legal terms, it's a liable party -- a legal counterpart whom you can hold responsible for defects. With Linux there's no such thing; there is no "Linus, Inc." You can't sue Red Hat if there are bugs in the kernel. You can sue Compaq or Sun or HP or whomever if their Unix products (Compaq's Tru64, Sun's Solaris, HP's HP-UX, whatever) fail. Red Hat et al, however, only sell "distributions", and they're not liable for damages.
This admittedly curious artifact might not matter to hackers, but for big companies that's the number one. Here's an example: A friend of mine works for a large commerce institution here in Norway, and essentially he told me they'd benched an untuned, default installation of Sybase ASE 11.4 (the free, 10-user-or-so Linux version that you can download) on a well-tuned Linux box (a well-specced PII), comparing it to a well-tuned, commercial Sybase installation on an extremely well-specced, extremely expensive HP-UX box. I can't vouch for their testing skills, but the benching scripts did something like insert 100,000 random records into a table, then manipulated them. While HP-UX is a pretty high-end, high-performing OS, the Linux box proved about 10 times as fast in the tests. This was on inexpensive hardware, but equally significant is the fact that Sybase licenses on Linux are iirc about half the price of that of other platforms. So moving to Linux would save lots of bucks and give them a tenfold speed increase. And still this company said no. No Linux for production servers. Why? They needed a liable party.
Thankfully, things are changing with vendors such as IBM -- and, I think, SGI (can anybody confirm this?) -- becoming full-fledged Linux system supporters. Ironically, even HP is providing Linux support engineers nowadays.
The difference between merely preinstalling Linux on machines (which IBM, Dell, etc. all currently provide) and selling Linux-based systems might not be much more than a subtle difference in semantics, but for large companies, this is the alpha and the omega, the yin and the yang, and the difference between relying on Linux, and merely using it.
Sometimes, as the adoption of Windows so prominently illustrates, politics is all that matters.
This is a pretty cool idea. However, the best versions of Tru64 and its apps are for Alpha processors. Though this would be a cool learning tool, I can't afford to buy an Alpha machine for home (though I'd love to have one.)
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
Now if I can get an alpha box, I'll be all set.
First Post!!! MY FIRST FIRST POST!
Okay so if you get this, can you run your fav linux games? CivCTP, Q3? If not forget it :(
Also does this unix have an install tool like rpm?
Also, well for the most of us alpha processor systems are toooo expensive? Anyone know where to get a sub $1500 system, that can handle (if not have) multiple processors.
Well anyhow, I got one of the first few comments, woohoo!
[==]
Nilstar.
Mmmmm - truclusters
I wonder why they're not releasing a similar noncommercial trucluster server. darn shame.
----- --- - - -
jacob rothstein
jacob rothstein reed college
People who really mess around with free unixes understand how the underlying architecture works and this knowledge is portable to any commercial unix and even non-unix systems like Windows or MacOS.
Anyway, Sun distributes free versions of Solaris (for non-commercial use) which don't come bundled with a compiler (HORROR!) but for which you can easily download gcc binaries.
So messing around with a system that you have to pay for to "learn commercial unix" (*cough, cough, barf*) sounds rather nonsensical to me. Not that I hate non-free OSs, mind you.
Your opinion may vary from mine, but I'll put money on my prediction that this offer from Compaq won't have too many takers.
-nux.
Its just a way for them to get some more money for their product. Commercial Unix is having problems because:
If the producers of all the commercial unices had got together many years ago - they might all be doing better now. But maybe its for the best. I don't believe that any company should have major control of the software or internet standards, as it always leads to abuse of power. The only alternative is a community. However I hope the companies will get behind the community its their only chance if they don't want a Micro$oft world. The community has no objection to companies making money with open source systems, in fact they want it to be used more, as long as the licence agreements are met. Some of this goes against the corporate model of doing things; maybe corporations need to redefine their purpose somewhat.
Just don't spend too long thinking about it!
Maybe Digital will use the money from this to put towards better support of Linux on the Alpha?
Yeah, this is cool and all, but....
Why cant they just "get it" and open the source instead? Its not like this is gonna generate a huge revenue stream or anything for Compaq. And seeing as big Q is mainly a computer/server company, I think it would be much better to just free the source, let it integrate into Linux (ok, and *BSD) and sell lots more Alpha servers due to this. Whatever they do, their Unix version is gonna dwindle and die, and it will just end up being an expense.
TN
You _do_ have a motherboard that supports T64, right? The cheaper cloner motherboards (those that were meant for budget NT/Linux systems) don't have enough NVRAM to support a T64 installation. I'm not an Alpha nerd but definitely check into whether your Alpha board (or the board you want) actually supports T64.
Your Working Boy,
I like to think about my christmas list right around this time. I don't need any computer upgrades, but what else is there? I've discovered that Solariz 7 and Solariz 8 Early Edition are free (except for CD and shipping, and no commercial use) and SCO has the same gig too. So I want those CD for x-mas, but Digital want's to be an ass about it, so forget them....now what other commercial OSes have a free-license program?
I've bought QUITE a few Alphas off of EBay. Just to a (DEC,Alpha) search on Computers -> Hardware. You can (could?) get a AlphaStation complete system for 300+, usually a EV4 (21064) 233 mhz machine. I have also picked up a PC164SX motherboard/Cpu combo (533mhz EV5 21164PC cpu) that takes DIMMS and can do either Tru64 or NT.
The main problem with Tru64 is that it supports VERY limited hardware. You have to have mostly Compaq/Digital hardware. An Adaptec SCSI card won't work - there aren't any drivers for it. A Matrox video card won't work - no drivers. A 3Com NIC on Tru64 won't work - no drivers. And Tru64 is notorious for not liking non-Digital hard drives and CD-ROMs. And this is all from experience, as I am currently a Tru64 administrator. But don't let this discourage you, as on my Tru64 box (the PC164SX box), I have an IDE CD-ROM and Quantum IDE hard drive on the box. Although I did order a 128 meg DIMM from Viking that was for this particular board. And BEay does have the individual parts and pieces available so you can get a DE500 NIC or perhaps a Digital/Compaq Qlogic ISP SCSI card. Of course, you can also order them from Compaq.
But there are some manufacturers that offer Tru64 hardware and drivers. For example, check out http://www.intraserver.com. They do SCSI cards for Intel, Sparc, and Alpha. They have drivers for Tru64, NT, OpenVMS(!) and Linux (and Solaris). So, of there's one, there may be another...
And how much DRAM/disk does it take?
-- Robert
I can't wait to get my copy, so I can run oracle 8 on my alpha box at home!
It would be a good thing to have around the house if you had an Alpha, but the story mentions it as being a cool learning tool. But for those without an alpha, wouldn't the $17 Solaris (if you really needed "real" UNIX) be far cooler?
The Company actually had a couple of Alpha machines that we were going to use for SPICE boxes, but DEC wanted several thousand $$$ per for a single-user license. Wasn't worth it. They sat around for a while and we loaded Alpha Linux on them and that was kool, but no executables for anything we really needed to do.
So, a couple of weeks ago, they were officially scrapped. I hauled them home hoping to load them with a current Linux distro (still no Alpha RH6.1, though -- wonder why?) So while getting around to it along comes Compaq with a rush of brains to the head and guess what?
ROTFLMAO!
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The joke on the Redhat Alpha mailing list today was "Cool! For $99 we can have a working Netscape!" (Forgot who actually posted that)
[Linux/Alpha can run many Tru64 binaries provided you have the right set of libraries. Presumably, you get these libraries when you pay your $99. Netscape doesn't exist for Linux/Alpha, and Mozilla's still a little quirkier than most would like it.]
-- Rick
For those of you looking for alpha's -- keep checking Ebay. 166mhz UDB's are on there frequently, but there are also some better systems sold there. I got my AlphaStation (21064@233mhz) there for around $500, which was a pretty good deal. I wish I had the money to get a better one, but guess I'll have to hold off on that for the time being.
Linux on the alpha isn't as bad as some people have posted. Not everything that runs on the x86 will run on the alpha, but the stuff that does run is very stable (okay, well maybe not Netscape, but is there any platform that Netscape is stable on? :) Plus it's just so much cooler to tell people that you've got an alpha..
Since many developers use linux / *BSD/ NT to develop, they are much more likely to use the same OS when they deploy. You end up using the tools with which you are familiar. Selling True64 inexpensively gives us developers a chance to become familiar with the OS and increases the chance that we will deploy using it. I am a big user of Linux - specially for development. However, for a job I had a couple years back I had to use Dec Unix, and was extremely impressed by it. I still use Linux for development but will be deploying using True64 unix. And I don't mind paying the ~$1500 single-user commercial license. For developer's like myself this is a great move by Compaq.
What about in Australia? Any hints on where to get good Alpha hardware?
-- Post No Gravy
All,
For those who bash this idea. Take a second or two and think about it. Tru64 skills are thin on the ground as it is. With the upcoming WildFire (not official yet ?) the skills will be truly in demand. If you have an Alpha Box I would recommend it. Until Linux gets proper clustering capabilities, it is the commercial UNIXs that will rule the High End.
Free UNIXs are fine for small Webservers, fileservers and all that. But it hasn't got the capabilities of the Big Iron yet.
Tru64 is fine if you set it up properly, but if not it crashes quite regularly. Our 8400s do anyway.
I don't mean this rhetorically, or to claim that linux is better. I'm genuinely curious.
:)
I suspect that a lot of the "big Unix" OSes have advanced features that linux/freeBSD don't, but I'm not a *nix guru so I don't know what they are.
So what are these features that are unique to big real Unices? Will someone please make a list of points that showcase the differences, the places linux lags behind in, etc.?
And...don't make this a my-OS-beats-the-crap-out-of-your-OS fight. Let's just calmly talk about this like mature adults...
A few others were inquiring about personal Alpha machines, so I thought I'd add. My Alpha box sports a EV56 21164 running at 600 Mhz with 256 Mb of RAM. Total cost of around US$300. It's quite nice running RH 6.1 or NT Workstation 4.0
For single processor performance Alpha servers came in with SPECint of 39.1 and SPECfp of 68.1
I browse with my threshold at 2 so I can't read my own comments :-)
Yes and, for those who don't remember, the roots of Digital Unix are actually OSF/1 which dates back to the glorious days of the Unices war UI vs OSF. That was in the early nineties. The good old times are over, I'm afraid :)
Going on means going far, going far means returning. Tao te Ching
teach yourself to install GNU tools on commercial unix, more like it...
Tru64's basic tools SUCK. find doesn't have -maxdepth, du doesn't have -b, the list goes on. It's basically agony to work on w/o having GNU tools.
But anyway, if you want to learn a commercial UNIX, why Tru64 (aka Digital UNIX, DG-UX)?? From what I've seen in job descriptions, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX skills are in much higher demand. And Solaris can be had for like $20 for non-commercial purposes (with SCSL'd source forthcoming...).
MoNsTeR
At the absolute minimum end of the spectrum, I see 5-10% better performance with Digital's C compiler over gcc, both set with full optimizations. In a few cases, I've seen almost a 2:1 advantage for the Digital compiler. Also, Digital's math libraries are better optimized. Finally, gcc will occasionally compile incorrect code on the Alpha when using -O2 or higher optimization levels.
About the only reason that I am not considering NetBSD is its seeming lack of support for XFree86 adapters. I did a fair bit of research on just what I was going to install on my Alpha, and it boils down to either Linux of FreeBSD as having the widest range of supported hardware. Even though it was a pain in the butt nailing down exactly what was supported in FreeBSD, I did choose that. Now Compaq goes and tosses a wrench into the works. Oh well ....off to find a supported HW list.
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
Even if they gave the TruCluster software and license away, you'd still have to fork out for two Alpha's, shared storage, and memory channel (cards and a hub). Unlike earlier versions of TruCluster, Memory channel is a prerequisite for V5.0 because of the new Cluster Common Filesystem. I don't have figures for these things in front of me, but the bare minimum cost has got to be over $10K for the lot. Not really in the price range of a hobbyist/home enthusiast.
Macka
Yeah, yeah, I know: you're not a real old school hacker unless you were working on Unix before Unix bacame popular. Good for you.
I've only used Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Linux (and only written code for the last two), but frankly I'd much rather be using Linux than any of the above.
I've heard Unix admins gripe about non-standard Linux-isms, but is a BSD/SysV syntax mix really that much of a problem compared to compilers that default to K&R instead of ANSI C, and system calls that were created solely to make your Unix source code incompatible and lock in software developers?
And as for the quality of said systems... well, Solaris is pretty sweet, but AIX and HP-UX are dead as soon as someone finds a hole deep enough to bury the remains. I remember telling people how aggravating it was that you couldn't upgrade a shared library or program in Windows while it was in use... only to discover that HP-UX 10.20 had the same limitation, not to mention further bass-ackwards problems with dynamic linking.
And don't get me started on CDE. The idea that multiple massive software vendors collaborated to produce the best desktop environment they could, and came up with *CDE* anyway, boggles the mind.
Don't get me wrong, there's lots of things that commercial Unices have (64-way SMP, high availability clustering, more optimized compilers, etc.) that Linux has yet to catch up to. But just because they're too expensive for the unwashed masses doesn't mean they're always worth it.
How about an SGI Origin 2000? ;)
;)
Or a Sun Enterprise 10000?
Or one of HP's high-end boxes?
Seriously though, looking at the kind of machines NCAR (national center for atmospheric research) buys for doing their weather simulations, I see no Alphas at all. They have everything from lowly Sun Ultra workstations and SGI Indigo2's to a handful of Crays and a brand-spanking new 128-cpu Origin 2k. If clustered Alphas provided better performance or lower price, they'd use 'em.
Of course, it *is* a US Gov't facility, so....
MoNsTeR
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
The best fair metric for chip performance seems to remain SPECint95 and SPECfp95 (www.specbench.org).
By that metric, the fastest recorded RISC and CISC speeds (1 per architecture) are the following:
700 MHz 21264A Compaq AlphaServer GS60E:
39.1 SPECint95 / 68.10 SPECfp95 (or w/ minimum optimizations, 34.7 SPECint_base95 / 54.5 SPECfp_base95)
733 MHz Pentium III (i840) Intel:
35.6 SPECint95 / 30.4 SPECfp95 (no _base figures available, figures from Intel, not yet on SPEC website)
440 MHz PA-8500 HP N4000:
34.0 SPECint95 / 51.4 SPECfp95 (30.8 int_base / 48.7 fp_base)
450 MHz UltraSPARC-II Sun Ultra 60 Model 1450:
19.7 SPECint95 / 27.0 SPECfp95 (16.2 int_base / 23.90 fp_base)
300 MHz MIPS R12000 Origin 2000 2-way:
18.4 SPECint95 / 34.4 SPECfp95 (18.1 int_base / 30.1 fp_base)
340 MHz PowerPC RS64-II IBM H70:
16.0 SPECint95 / 21.2 SPECfp95 (13.7 int_base / 20.2 fp_base)
Thus the answer to your question is "Yes, Alpha remains the fastest", with the important caveat that the 10% performance advantage over Intel comes at a significantly higher price. All other RISCs are slower than the fastest Intel systems, at least in terms of uniprocessor integer performance, the best single predictor for most CPU-limited applications.
Note that Apple G4 performance, and performance of IBM's latest S80 (450 MHz Power RS-III) aren't discussed by their respective vendors. If you extrapolated the G4 performance from the mildly similar 340 MHz Power RS-II, performance of a 500 MHz part would be around 23.53 SPECint with SPECfp at 31.8. IBM's Power PC 604e parts have slightly lower integer performance and much lower floating point performance at the same clock rates as the RS-II (375 MHz 604e runs 15.1 SPECint, 10.1 SPECfp,) so even if there are some other G4 improvements, I doubt the 500 MHz G4 will be beating a 733 MHz Pentium III.
Note that these benchmarks don't measure performance of vector-processing chip features like MMX used by a few apps like Photoshop.
--LP
P.S. (Sidebar: The minimal performance value-add of RISC over Intel is is why I think Linux's highly touted multi-architecture support for RISCs is exactly a glowing scalability feature as some apparently make it. I guess 64-bits and floating point comes in handy for a few apps. Other than that, it's a nice plus for legacy hardware that grows less relevant by the day. )
It doesn't really matter much... according to DEC marketing, the product is dead. kaput. They made these little license plates (I have one) that say:
Digital
Unix
Live free or die
Considering they're now owned by Compaq....
#include < disclaimer.h>
>> Reliability: I can't say much about this. Properly configured, neither DU nor Linux "ever" crash. linux never crash? i don't really think so
Can one compile a distribution of Linux for Alpha (kernel, library, tools, KDE, etc.) using Digital ccc?
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
It's good to see some people here recommending ovms!, I would recommend anyone with an old alpha or vax to try the openvms hobbyist program. Because, well, let's face it, sometimes unix can get a little bit, err, boring. old. learned. done. or maybe that is just me. further information on the OpenVMS hobbyist program can be found at http://www.montagar.com/hobbyist/ and if I know HTML like I hope I do OpenVMS Hobbyist Program
"Hope is the denial of reality, it is the carrot dangled before the draft horse in a vain attempt to reach it" - Raistl
First of all, if you are interested in Alphas on Linux.. go to AlphaLinux.
There are vendors listed there that can get you set up (look to the right... I recommend Hard Data and DCG myself).
As far as this *deal* forget it! Okay, probably a year ago I would have said yes, but not now. Not for Unix-guru-wannabe. I am having so much fun hacking linux up and especially XFree86 on Alpha. (VooDoo3 is really really fast on alpha!)
You see, my friend, what makes the Alpha so fast, is *smart compiler technology*. A decent compiler like egcs is __NOT__ going to produce really optimized alpha machine code. What to do?
Well, previously we were rolling and unrolling loops like a smoker. Then we were hand tuning. Using asm().
And then Compaq did a stunning thing. They released an optimized math library. They released Compaq Fortran for LINUX. And then they stunned me again. They released their C compiler.. natively for Linux.
Now before you go banging on the cathedral walls.. consider that egcs would require quite a rewrite to really do the "right" thing on Alphas. If I know jack about compilers, I'd try.. but compilers are spooky black magic.. right up there with human cloning for a application/driver hacker. (imagine a compiler, that compiles it's own source code.)
Of course if you're considering Tru64, I assume that you don't have qualms paying for software in the first place. I don't have problems paying for software that doesn't pretend to non-commercial open-standards blah blah. A compiler produces an executable. Done. If I don't like it in the end, *toss*.
Anyhow, this brings me to my final point. If you don't buy the developer tools for this system, you can only use gcc. Which at that point you might as well be using linux.. because I guarantee you that Digital Unix ain't going to make poop difference in performance if you're compiling using egcs/gcc. I don't think the developer tools are going to cost 99 bucks though.
So if you're like me and just love the "beauty" of a well designed and implemented OS such as Tru64, then go for it. If you've got the right hardware and all.. it's perfect.
Otherwise, skip it. Get a nice DS20 from Compaq(or at the least a 533 MHz 164LX. It uses PC100 SDRAM DIMMS.. and PCI slots) Load Linux. And when it comes time to compile.. consider that you might want to use the ccc (compaq c compiler) for intense programs. Gains of 10 to 30 percent speed increases are pretty good.
Roger
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
So Digital UNIX (actually called Tru64 UNIX) is dead now huh? Strange that, as they just announced a $100 million marketing campaign to promote its growth.
I guess the folks at Compaq just like throwing good money after bad (NOT).
Macka
You can get a full working KDE 1.1.2 build for Tru64 UNIX now. Built for v4.0f, but it should run on V5 without changes.
/ dist
ftp://finwds01.tu-graz.ac.at/pub/kde/tru64_4.0x
Macka
So don't buy it then. And lay off the italics.
They're trying to broaden their base of professionals who know the idiosyncracies (to say the least) of their OS, see...
Incidentally, there's money to be made here. I use it at work. Extensively. We're a Tru64 shop. I get paid pretty well for knowledge I acquired a few years ago working for a company that happened to run its web server on Digital Unix because it's what we had lying around.
Why, now, a Tru64 shop? Well... we're running HUGE Oracle databases with a 3rd-party ERP system layered on top of them, for one. Another box runs a commercial database package for libraries, for which Tru64 is the preferred install platform.
And what sorts of nice things do you get out of Tru64 (TruCluster notwithstanding)? How about (this is a seriously incomplete list):
Don't get me wrong... I love open source software. I run both Linux and FreeBSD. But, what we're talking about here is a large industrial product, as in, competing with E-class Sun boxes and IBM mmf's. It wasn't designed to run a website for "Joe's T-Shirt Shack" and it would be overkill to select it for that... unless you happen to have (like we did a couple jobs ago) the hardware lying around.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
/.
Sun's Workshop tools have a license gizmo which can do license management from a license server to multiple client workstations, as well as local compiles.
cc(1) says that you need to check out a license to use the automatic loop parallelization stuff. (Workshop cc has the very cool feature of being able to generate a multithreaded program to run different parts of a loop on different CPUs. :)
borg]~ $ cc -xlicinfo
/opt/SUNWspro/bin/../SC4.2/bin/../../license_dir/s unpro.lic,1
License server : borg.cs.dal.ca
Sun WorkShop Compiler C Version 4.200 expires on : Never
Users of Sun WorkShop Compiler C Version 4.200 :
None
Total Licenses : 25 Licenses Available : 25
Using LM_LICENSE_FILE =
The information above is for the first occurrence of the requested
feature in the first license server on the list.
Set the LM_LICENSE_FILE environment variable
differently to
see information about other license servers or use lmstat(1).
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
I mean.. are there any other categories.. like
"starving college students" -- price $0.00
"professionals with more money
than sense" -- price $999.99
but seriously.. this might be worth it, except for the fact of how expensive Alpha boxes are.. anyone out there use one at home.. and how much did it cost?
-- "This is my sig... there are many like it but this one is mine"
If I recall, Digital did this with OpenVMS a few years ago, too. In fact, that license may have been free. People with Alpha hardware may want to check that out as well; it's a good OS... probably the most user-friendly command-line based OS available.
;-)
(Not that *nix isn't user-friendly.
This is a good move on Digital's part, although I hope it helps Tru64 better than it did VMS which is still just hanging on.
Wow, not counting the shipping charge, that's almost as cheap as Sun's free developer program version of Solaris :)
_______
2B1ASK1
I got the Intel copy of Solaris for about $20 last year under a developers program.
I'm not too sure how valuable these cheap SCO, Tru64 and Solaris OS's are with Linux and the *BSD's out there but, as a Sun admin, I had a particular interest. However, I run my own projects under Linux.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
(Off Topic) Is the Alpha chip still the fastest? After 5-6 years now? Or does the G4 now claim the title. (Apple debate ensues)
--- this space intentionally left blank.
Alright, the time has come to get an Alpha. Does anyone have any good recommendations on where to buy an Alpha CPU/MB combo? I assume I can use standard parts to build the rest of the machine. (eg. Matrox video, 3Com NIC, Adaptec SCSI) Am I on the right track here?
One thing I can say about this is that it has brought Digital UNIX (I'm sorry, but I can't bring myself to say Compaq Tru64) into a price range that us "normal geeks" can afford it.
:)
:)
Until this announcement, I saw no real justification for getting a cheap alpha on ebay or wherever. It would be nice to see Linux on an alpha, but it's not worth buying one for that. BUT, $99 for Digital UNIX makes it worth another look! For around $1000 - $1500 you can have a darn spiffy DU/Alpha machine at home...As opposed to $900 - $1400 for a Linux/Alpha machine. (yes, I know, you can get the hardware cheaper than that too--but I want some horsepower if I'm going to buy one)
I have been using Linux for 7 years and Digital UNIX (at work) for 3 years, and I must say I'm impressed with Digital UNIX. It has a good feel to it--it feels enough like Linux that the transition is easy. Keep in mind I've used solaris (SunOS) and HPUX, but that was 9 years ago as a newbie, so I can't make meaningful comments as to their Linuxish-ness. AIX, however, is right out!
Some of the comments I've read about the maturity of commercial UNIX vs. Linux are true. Linux IS a real *NIX, but there are things that Digital UNIX has that I can still only dream about for Linux. AdvFS, LSM, HUGE file support, raw disk devices, etc. Work in progress...
I've also never seen Linux run on Alpha hardware, so I'm sure that's skewing my perspective some too.
Reliability: I can't say much about this. Properly configured, neither DU nor Linux "ever" crash.
Downside: CDE. However, it then becomes a fun project to download AfterStep source and get it up and running (takes some effort--but it works).
What about NetBSD? NetBSD was the first open source OS to port to the Alpha, supports most alpha systems, etc. I'd guess NetBSD is a good deal ahead than Linux.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
If I'm not mistaken, the regular C compiler (cc) comes as part of the base license for Tru64. If you want the fancier stuff (C++, debugger, et.al.), you'll have to drop extra cash, but the normal compiler is part of the deal.
How else could one rebuild vmunix?
if you need a debugger, you can always fall back to gdb. 'Works fine!
An optimized compiler for one. Anyone working with linux on an alpha knows the performance of gcc is sub-par. If you want any real speed out of the alpha, it really helps to have digital and ccc. Linux on alpha is good, it just has a ways to go before it can catch up to the performance of digital. Try some tests on the digital machines vs the linux machines with compaqs testdrive. Im not sure if gcc is symlinked to ccc on the linux box though, you might want to check because ccc is definatly going to produce faster code than gcc but digital will still pull out ahead. Make sure to take note of the load though. Sure there are downsides to it but digital is about performance on the alpha first and formost. As for the unsupported part of your argument, whats linux?
This is your boss. You must now bring those machines back to work first thing Monday morning. Oh, and BTW, we need to have a talk about your reading and posting to Slashdot on Company time. B-/
....just kidding
Does FreeBSD for Intel have the same 2 GB file limit like Linux does or does it allow >2 GB files? Anyone knows?
Simpy
Here here, good to see someone else who respects OpenVMS. I love em both, UNIX and OpenVMS. Too bad Compaq is killing OpenVMS
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
I'm sure the opposite must be true, too: that someone will think that since this is offered by Compaq, that it must run on the boxes Compaq actually makes money selling.
If I were Compaq, I'd be careful to mention here or there, maybe like on the order page, that this runs on machines that most people on this planet have never even heard of.
Me personally, I'd have bought one of these here Alpha boxes, but I've been waiting and waiting for them to at least get to beta. It's been years; what's the holdup?
What would the purpose of this be? What could Compaq earn from this move? Any ideas?
This would be useful for schools.. running on an alpha would be much nicer than running on an intel box for a large scale server etc.. i.e. your departmental (or school) mailserver/webserver/fileservers... The other real question (they mentioned optimization tools, but it was a bit unclear whether they were system optimization or something else) is whether it comes w/ compilers.. I would guess the dec compilers kick some serious butt. For $99 for a compiler on a decent platform, it would be worth getting a lot of the hardcore computational groups i.e. in physics/chemistry and maybe engineering. You know the kidz who just buy farms of boxes, maybe run MPI and see what numbers spit out at the end of the day :)
I picked up a copy of the latest Linux Journal and they were advertising two or three places where you could get Alpha hardware. Be warned that the stuff ain't cheap (You want a 21264 if you're going to go to the trouble of getting one...)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
nm
I am really stumped. Why would anyone pay $99 for a closed-source, unsupported, singl-architecture UNIX. Could someone wigh in on the merits of Tru64 vs. the various free UNIXs on Alpha. What Features does it have? Why should i run it (and pay $99)?
xm@GeekMafia.dynip.com [http://GeekMafia.dynip.com/]
Compaq today announced that it would be shipping DOS for its line of personal computers to hobbyists for a mere $99. A Compaq spokesperson said, "This continues to reaffirm our position as offering the best dead technology for the most money." Supposedly, it comes with a BASIC interpreter, but you cannot edit your own programs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't I see compaq switching to Linux a while back? Why this Tru64 garbage? Anyway, I got a copy of solaris for $16.63, shipped. Same deal - no cc, only ld. Why the expensive tag?
Visit
My fault; I presumed AMD still wasn't publishing SPEC scores, but when I went to look, I discovered that hey, they released some with the Athlon launch in September! No 700 MHz results, but they do have 650 MHz Athlon scores, and Intel has released 650 MHz Pentium III scores. So here, hopefully better late than never:
650 MHz Athlon, Microstar MS-6167 mboard:
29.4 SPECint95 / 22.6 SPECfp95
650 MHz Pentium III, SE440BX2 mboard (results from Intel, not SPEC directly):
31.6 SPECint95 / 22.9 SPECfp95
I'm not sure where you get your statement that "AMD performs faster than the Pentium III in almost all tasks." What tasks, exactly?
Personally, I find differences of 5-10% irrelevant between any two chips anyway. Athlon and PIII appear quite comparable performance-wise.
--LP
Am I reading this license wrong? Are you even allowed to run a web server on this? Would that fall under "non-profit" use? Or do they not want "institutional non-profit" use?
First off, the linux distributions for alpha are crap, and the FreeBSD ones are worse. Doesn't mean they don't run, but they weren't developed for alpha and it shows. This is an awesome deal (though a bit more expensive than the Solaris promotion) to run a true alpha OS. My friend had been running an older version of DEC UNIX on his multia, and I've been looking forward to picking up a copy for a long time. Stop trashing this for a minute and think, eh? For those of us that run low-end DEC boxes and want a real OS, this is a godsend.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?