Slashdot Mirror
SGI Release Iris 2.3 for Linux
Thanks to Allan over at SGI for letting me know that SGI has just released IRIS Performer for Linux. It's version 2.3 and it's free for download. If you want the program or more information, they've IRIS page for Linux up and running.
I remember playing with earlier versions of this software under IRIX a couple of years ago, and it was pretty impressive. I will definitely have to download a copy of this to play with under Linux.
That visual databases are all the rage? Does that imply visual interactive porn archives? Call me cray but something that needs an SGI machine's version of graphics will cost a mint and also necessitate a lower graphics resoluton. What makes this better than say some simple thing like php, or mySQL or the like?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Although many of us may be somewhat underwhelmed by the utility of Iris Performer (don't get me wrong, its a nice application - it just isn't at all useful for my purposes!), we have to recognize this as an awesome sign because of the trends it fortells. This is further evidence that SGI is truly committed to the Linux platform. This gives me greater hope that things like the SGI Journalled FS, etc will make it into Linux soon.
This really has much significance that trancends the simple release of a niche application.
-nullity-
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
They (SGI) went out of their NT business since they cannot diferentiate themselves against other NT vendors. In which way SGI plans to diferentiate within Linux community? Their IRIX applications flood will stop one day or another.
-- We provide Zope consulting from US$ 25 hourly!
** Disk Space Requirements for IRIS Performer: Nearly 125 MB of disk space is required (30 MB temporarily and 95 MB permanently).
** Other Product Dependencies for IRIS Performer: To be functional, IRIS PerformerTM 2.3 requires that you have the following items installed on your Linux system:
* glibc 2.1.1
* XFree86 3.3.3.1
* Mesa
* Motif® installed
I wonder if there is any chance it will work with Lesstif.
they're trying to cature the lower cost market and provide a divided pricing scheme; linux (and intel, til they killed their intel boxes) for customers with less $$$, irix for customers with more $$$. the recent interview in which that guy from sgi (sorry, i forgot his name and position) said, to paraphrase, "irix is up here, linux is down there" is trying to make sure they still have high $$$ customers.
not that i care; they're doing some useful kernel stuff that helps us.
*rant* it says linux, not linux/x86, again!! though i noticed x86 only was made clear in the "staroffice ported to mac os" article. */rant*
Never used an IRIX box... so how is the X-server on those things! I mean i like XFree a lot and I think that they are doing a great job with it. And i cant wait till 4.0 comes out! My question is that isthere a way that SGI could bring their "knowledge" i.e. code for an X-server to help us to ? ?
:)
Hmmm this looks cool!!!! two years back I was hunting about for stuff that would be cool to run on my puny box!!! Now i am trying to weed out the
GOOD software that I can run!!!
SGI if only someone there would realize that Silicon Graphics was a cooler name!!
OpenSource is the way to go SGI... charge for Support.
Training. !!!
Documentation.
Consulting (MONEY ppl)
And ohhh.... clothing!
And i think that the current direction that SGI has taken is going good. Just hope they can keep it up!!!!!
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
See the FAQ.
One single remark to SGI:
Get a clue, or else,
find a company to take you over, before your market cap has become negative.
Any Chapter eleven consultants for a job at SGI?
Making a product open source does not mean that the host company will shrivel up and die.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
To anyone who's registered and looked at the download page, does this include source code?
Definite Kudos to the SGI people for the support pages for IRIS! It is the kind of thing that the LSM blerbs used to be helpful with, but it is orders of magnitude better!
Now I *have* to get a hardware accellerated 3d graphics card....
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I get a blank page when I hit the download link. It does not seem slashdotted, just that link won't work.
There aren't even screenshots, though I did find a gallery of images made with it here.
There are some tutorials with some partial shots, (like this one) they are here.
You are probably referring to the perfly utility, which is "just" a viewer app.
...) you will find Performer useful. If you are not in the visualisation business you won't find it useful. (E.g. I don't find MS Word useful - I'm not a secretary)
Performer is not an application, its an API. A library. An API that sits on top of OpenGL (which is very very low-level) and allows you to do scene graph visualisation. It is not a 3D modeller or whatever. It is an API to do scene graph visualisation and it's the best API to do scene graph visualisation.
If you need this (simulate new builings, towns, interactive walk-thru,
I continually laugh every time I hear these people talking about how whether this is useful or not, it fortells linux's rise to power... all of us dedicated linux guys have stopped fortelling it because it's already happening. Linux is set to become the dominant OS, or if nothing else than prepare us for the influx of *nix os's. If Linux doesn't become #1, then some other nix will. There are far too many nix os's for that not to happen. Anyone interested in counting all the distributions / full-blown OS's of unix and unix-like operating systems? That oughtta be a fun and time consuming project. Anyway i'm drifting... my point was that ported software isn't really news, it's expected that this will happen... it's more of gratification for all of us linux guys :-) we were RIGHT all along, hehe.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
I'm still waiting for them to bring over their window manager and desktop from IRIX. That was my favorite part of workingon an SGI. If I could get the full IRIX feel out of my linux box I'd be in heaven! Of course then there'd be less reason to get IRIX instead of Linux so I doubt they'll do it.
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
Yes, the IRIX desktop is nice, and was at that time better than the GUI of a Mac.
I have an O2 running IRIX 6.5 with the IRIX 4Dwm/IRIS Desktop blabla, and a GNU/Linux workstation with GNOME installed. I like the GNOME desktop MUCH MORE. If you like KDE you will prefer KDE over 4Dwm as well.
I think it the time for the IRIX desktop has gone. Use GNOME!
Well it's great to have some development libraries for the SGI video hardware without having to pay for them, now that SGI no longer makes video hardware. Sort of like getting to look at the source code to Mozilla after Netscape folded up, getting to look at the source code to Hexen after Quake III came out. They're consistantly products that the developers gave up on because the users didn't care about them anymore. And so I don't really care about IRIS performer even though it's still nice to not have to pay for something.
Hmm, thinking about it, if you leave the rocks there long enough, they probably don't really have to be all that hot, but I can't imagine them staying in anyones pants for very long:).
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
The fact that they've decided to officially support Linux for the low-end products is a great boon to the OS! Everybody has benefitted from OpenGL, havn't they? What would PC games be like without it? We'd probably all be using DirectX (ack!).
It's allways a good thing for a big-time company to enter the OSS arena. They've merely come to the realization that not everybody has the money to purchase farms of machines like Pixar did for Toy Story, so they're supporting Linux in an effort to make the company accessible to the lower-end market.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
An article on SGI been posted for over 3 hours and the AC ranting about the GCC and IDO package hasn't posted yet. Must have taken a long weekend.
Dude, A few months ago, I built 3.9.15, and it rocks, it has never crashed on me, like 3.3.x allways did. I have been able to leave 3.9.15 running for days, and somtimes weeks, and I come back to it still running, just as i left it, my only problem is it eats a little to much memory, and without playing with the config file, its a processor hog. Now, I think it would be cool if they were to also help out the XFree86 project, maybe make their XServer have a smaller memory foot print!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:)
Disclaimer: I'm dangerously unqualified to answer this question, so some of this is probably wrong. Them's the breaks.
Hope this helps a bit.
Just out of interest, what's your opinion of Maverik
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Allan Schaffer contributing to the mix. First Carmack and now Schaffer, kinda makes you wonder if the Slashdot folks are slowly killing off the l33t d00ds and replacing them with folks that know what they're talking about!
Allan and company, keep up the great work!
Check it out: Microsoft quietly dumps Windows OpenGL support.
Performer is nifty and it's nice to see wider support now. At any rate, I just wanted to make a comment about the SGI "Magic Bus" demo semi that makes its way around the country... How about some different or newer demos?
I realize that a good deal of what's based on Performer is kept under wraps, but there's gotta something better than a 1992-looking truck driving simulator... or a 1994-looking tank simulator.
Last year, when I was a freshman, SGI visited my campus. Here we where standing next to an (I belive) 8-processor, 3-piped, Onyx2 IR2 running, *gasp* Performer Town and Vis5D! I love SGI and have a MaxImpact on my dorm room desk, but to be honest, I expected more. Although, I did love playing with Maya on an O2 and the paralax shutter glasses on a Deskside Onyx2.
BTW you suffer from a common misconception: What you call video is normally called graphics (gfx). 3D gfx. HAve you ever seen a PC with a video port? I have not - just a port for the graphics screen, and video if you buy additional equipment.
gfx is what your monitor displays. video is what your VCR/TV equipment displays. Or you can show a video on the gfx screen (xawtv, mpeg players).
Simple, eh? Basic hardware knowledge.
And about SGI: SGI does VIDEO (what video really is, not what you think), and SGI does GRAPHICS (high-end 3D gfx). And SGI will continue to do so.
No reason to spread FUD on the only company that really got how open source works and really works hard to become a good member of the community.
Dude, how about "giving away books does not mean that the publisher will shirvel up and die " ?
At least you could have provided some example how the heck giving away product is supposed to enhance SGIs bottom line ?
I've seen quite a bit of confusion on /. about Performer, why it's a good thing, why is SGI so stupid / brilliant, etc. so I figured that I'd summarize some of the key points that are most important to me as a graphics guy who does a lot of graphics-newbie indoctrination. For true Performer-heads reading, remember that I'm being purposely "high level", so feel free to add detail that I'm glossing over.
Background: I'm an SGI hack from way back (not all the way back, but close) with lots of hours logged on everything except their most recent Origins and Onyx2's. I was migrating my IrisGL (OpenGL hadn't been invented yet) code from C to C++ when the original Performer 1.0 framework starting wandering out of the labs. Since then, it's much more OOD - OpenGL and C++ have greatly increased its usefulness without over "object"ing it.
Here are some of the things that Performer can give you quickly (i.e., not much more complex than Performer "Hello World"):
[This is getting long so I'll wrap up.]
Why does Slashdot and the rest of the Linux crowd care? Well, the premier all-around computer graphics company is handing you their flagship visual simulation framework and saying, "we hope you have a good time." The marketability of Linux just went up by orders of magnitude - simple example in my field, it counters HP's arguments that they're a better buy for military simulations. "Gosh, you're more expensive than Linux / IRIX and not as powerful. Why exactly are you better?"
Why does SGI care? The one place they've always lost is marketing - in a word, they stink at it. They need the groundswell from the popular marketplace. So, be loud. If you try it and like it, say so. If you find things that you need or don't work, complain loudly and constructively.
Also: be quotable. Make sure that it's very obvious that you're a *nix-head running SGI software. Give them the ammunition and SGI will produce high-coolness useful power for all of us.
-- Doctor Bob
Come on, what is this SGI? We are running Intels, not Silicon Graphics Workstations. Give me a break here!
So then, with 10 lines of code, I could create Mr. Singing-dancing Paperclip, the last remaining "Killer App" that the pundits say we need in order to become a viable force on the desktop? Apparently, this is much needed.
Actually, I love the commitment from SGI, I just wish it was all GPL. Then we could have some fun with embedding parts of the source in applications.
I think it's just a matter of time before about 5 products show up that use the API. Then I get to have some fun.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
Avid and SoftImage are wildly different beasts in a completely different market space -- they are used to render animations "off-line", with image quality being paramount and frame rate an absolute non-issue. They're also more geared towards the user interface (for the animator) than towards the run-time visuals (for the pilot). The finished animations go into movie F/X and TV commercials.
This is all a long-winded way of saying, whatever is going on with animation packages like Avid & Maya & SoftImage & etc. is occuring in an area totally unrelated to IRIS Performer & the Modelling, Simulation, and Imaging (MS&I) industry.
It's not a world that's had much exposure in Linux yet though (before today! :-) but with IRIS Performer being released for Linux now, other MS&I kits like MPI's Vega just having been announced as coming soon, and SGI's general impetus towards bringing its graphics firepower into the Linux space, I think we'll see a lot more in this area in the times to come.
Regarding "a shift from visualization workstations to internet servers": this isn't the case, there's been no such shift. Many of the same capabilities of our systems that make graphics work well (bandwidth, I/O, and the myriad features in IRIX) are also very well suited for servers & the internet, so we're nailing all three birds here with the same basic R&D stones.
More specifically, SGI is focusing its efforts on three business areas, which you're free to abbreviate as S, G, and I ... :-)
- High Performance Systems: (aka: SERVERS)
- Visual Computing Solutions (aka: GRAPHICS)
- Broadband Systems (aka: INTERNET)
You're welcome to read more about this (informally) in the Friends of Performer Meeting Summary that I posted after SIGGRAPH last August. There's also quite a lot of official information about our strategy linked off the front page of www.sgi.com.Scalable, high-performance servers for HPC, technical computing, and Business Intelligence Applications.
Solutions for collaboration, visualization of complex data and media-rich content creation. This is where IRIS Performer and our high-end graphics systems fit in.
Internet infrastructure products with "appliance-like" features for broadband content, applications, and services.
We have a few 540's that I would love to have running linux. You had a 320 running with accelerated OGL, but when will the public see this and be able to have this happen on their own machines?
I would like these 540's to run linux, and run apps like performer and maya under linux...
Sadly is seems that these machines with such sweet graphics are being discontinued already...
I have used sgi products for many years, I am always impressed by the hardware and software that is produced by the people at sgi...
I am, however, somewhat disgusted at the marketing people at sgi...
If sgi would of sold machines with FREE compilers, I believe the sgi market/user base would be much different today...
The Belluzo affair disgusts me...
but thats not your fault...
good work and good luck...
I haven't coded for Direct3D or OpenGL myself. But from what I hear from dozens of colleagues and friends who have, OpenGL is a superior industry standard. The game community with its consumers would be best served to turn away from Microsoft in this matter. As Microsoft's only goal is to dominate the market, at all costs. And it's just too bad they're much better at marketing and buying, than they are at programming. And lying to their customers.
From my perspective, companies like IBM and SGI are great examples to the rest of the computer industry. They have rock-solid integrity and are willing to follow the winds of change in the industry. These are the companies that are going to prevail in the long run.
Good job!
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
You talk from fear-based logic. Every huge success in business is based on bold actions.
For the past 10 years unprofessional marketing has proven superior in winning a consumer base. Just hype your product, announce releases prematurely, invade public boards with anonymous infiltrators, support computer magazine reporters with products and money, fake scandals, spread FUD, etc.. etc. It's a loong story, and you've probably heard it all before.
With these tactics, you may get an edge over competitors. Even those with superior products. You generate a contagious wave of people willing to buy your products. The problem is just that not every business in the industry has been willing to go to such lows as some companies have. In fact, due to their high profile, they couldn't afford such a thing! These companies has been suffering under the general ignorance of the public.
Luckily for these high profile companies, low tactics always backfires someday. People are waking up recognizing themselves as victims. Ultimately they will retake responsibility, not letting business giants rule their lives anymore.
The future of computing lie in increased openness, collaboration, interoperability, quality and providing services. Because this is what consumers will want. Also, types of applications that has proven their worth will be cheaper as it is with every established technology. Maybe even gratis in many circumstances, certainly in Open Source projects.
If you still wonder why giving out free downloads, think of it as an investment in the future. The future for companies will not be delivering products, but leading the development. As it should have been from the start.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
That's rubbish.
a) Avid did not layoff 300 engineers. I don't think any engineers were laid off (it was other people).
b) They are not moving towards 'e-commerce' but have laid plans to do internet content creation (I suspect web/internet video etc.).
What this has to do with SGI, I don't know. The market for viz-sim is not the same as Soft, Avid,Discreet etc. - it's the scientific/engineering end of things.
Well this is a great step in the right direction, but what I would realy like to see is some of those powerful 3D tools ported to linux. Currently we have POVRAY, and Blender 3D as free, or virtualy free full fledged packages. There are some comercial packages that most of us can not afford like Houdini (sorry I dont know the url, I cant afford it so I dont keep it handy), but a good package in the smae price range is an absolute necesity. Blender 3D is nice, but it's modeler is not as easy to use as such *indo*s packages as Lightwave and 3D Studio Max. We have GIMP, now we need LinuxWave or 3D Studio Linux, and maybe this is a step in the right direction. Unfortunatly I doubt Maya will be affordable either and it's unfortunate, as it is an awsome program. If anyone with any pull is reading this or if someone wants to send me some other options I would be most happy to finaly dismiss windows as only needed to play Asheron's Call. What a wonderful day that will be and the masses shall rejoice and the evil giant will feel yet another foot being slamed into a most uncomfortable place!
O'Reilly is giving away books (www.oreilly.com/openbook), and I don't see them going out of business any time soon.