ARM is more compact that a normal RISC architecture because most instructions are conditional and can have bit shift or rotations too. This doesn't just mean less instructions required to do common tasks, but it also means less branching, which isn't only faster, but again leads to less instructions as 'branches' can share instructions. In the old Acorn days I remember how much noise there was about how much more compact it was than x86. ARM isn't the RISC your daddy knew. Thumb just makes it even more compact, and unlike x86's instruction decoders, it can be powered off and not used.
x86 really problem is legacy. It has to be backwards compatible, ARM doesn't bother. You might says that's terrible, and people do, but they aren't thinking open source, where the repository can be just compiled for the different target as needed. The user doesn't need to know or care, they just do apt-get regardless. Or if, you are that way inclined, you could argue about Java/.NET bytecode making code compiled at run time achieving the same thing. Either way, you can free up the chip design from legacy.
I don't like graphics cards. It's a like a whole separate computer, with all that processing power and memory, not accessible from the main computer properly. It would be better to bring it all back to the centre. RAM is the best example of this. The graphics card can have nearly as much RAM as the rest of the system but day to day, my graphics needs are tiny. So why can't that RAM be used to cache disk, which would be much more useful to me. The processing power, ok, it's in the form of a bag of stream processors taking different instruction set to the CPU, but I'm sure it can be used for more than graphics. Yes there are APIs to do that already, and yes, we are clearly heading in this direction anyway.
This doesn't take away DirectX or OpenGL, it just means you don't have to use them. It also means other, new breed, APIs can come along that generically use all that unified power, and don't care about make/model of hardware like graphics card. Like in the old days of software rending. Back then, the screen was just an address, and what you did with that address was up to you. You could use an off the shelf renders, but you where free to write some crazy thing of your own if you wanted. In Linux world, Gallium is interesting because it heading in this direction, making graphics APIs implementations hardware agnostic, but it doesn't have the game market to really go crazy with it. We could maybe hope for some crazy demos though.:-)
Go on then, I'll bite.
That's not Linux's problem, it's Adobe's and the graphics card manufacturers. Loads of reimplimenting of closed stuff needs to happen for it to be Linux's fault. (That's Linux as a platform, not as just a kernel) With Gallium/DRM/KMS/Wayland/etc and HTML5 hopefully it will be Linux's problem and will all go away nicely. Having said all that, works ok for me now with the closed Flash player and the closed NVidia drivers. It's just unpalatable (and you are left in the slow lane of X developments, oh and booting is ugly and you can't switch virtual tty safely or fast).
Kind of like social benefits or welfare?
Have to say, even unemployed I'd still program, and I'd be doing much more open sourcey stuff than now.....;-)
I also have to say, what I see of people living lives of welfare, is there is a kind of hopelessness there. Like mass depression. The nasty-party/people-on-right say they are work shy or lazy, but I think many are depressed as much as anything. I know a few of the welfare kids on our street, and future jobs doesn't register. Even one, clearly mechanically gifted/skilled in some sense, the idea of working doing it hadn't even cross his mind. There is a feeling there is no jobs, and those that there are bad, don't pay well and go to other people anyway. The future is a dark hole, best think of today. No wonder so many get into trouble. But are they wrong? Is there future work for them? Personally, I feel, if we are paying people anyway, might as well extract value for that money, so in effect, a government job. Then use this work force for some inspiring projects, or at least social good projects. Love the idea of concentrating on GNH. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness
Re:Another great Python 3.x series release
on
Python 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 2
EXACTLY. If the Python devs leave 2.x too long and keep saying 3.x only, they will find someone will just fork 2.x and continue it. In free software you only get to make the rules while the community thinks they are good, or it's "fork you!" and the community goes elsewhere.
To me, all the supporting both 2.x and 3.x looks really messy, and why support 3.x if no one else does? Python 3 doesn't seam to be making any progress is taking over and I think it is because it's 2.x with the critical mass. In things as sprawling as languages backward compatibility is really really important. C++ was so successful because it piggy backed on C. Backwards compatibility means why not take it, you start with what you already have.
LOL! Dude, check yours. This is the same processor as the SheevaPlug. I own a SheevaPlug, no FPU.
Just google "SheevaPlug FPU".
This might help:
$cat/proc/cpuinfo
Processor : Feroceon 88FR131 rev 1 (v5l)
BogoMIPS : 1192.75
Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp
CPU implementer : 0x56
CPU architecture: 5TE
CPU variant : 0x2
CPU part : 0x131
CPU revision : 1
Don't think so, but I think it's not going to be far off.
The lack of open drivers is a big BUT for the tegra 2, because you know it's not going to come with anything Debian based, and that will be what I want.
They are great, but I've had two power units fail on me. Rather then get a third the same, I've got it wired to a old router external power unit. There are so may pictures of melted power units, it's a very common problem. Maybe it is fixed now, but at least part of the problem was the air slots in the plastic case aren't always clear, sometimes completely seamed. That and cheap capacitor from what I've read. Great boxes let down by little things that matter.
Anyway, Beagleboard is old hat now, Pandaboard is the way forwards now.;-)
What would be much bigger deal is a better power unit. One less prone to melting. That is the biggest issue with the SheevaPlug family, other then that major failing, they are already pretty good.
I thought the criticism wasn't so much about the graphics drivers being in the kernel, as the windowing/GUI. No one is talking about moving windowing into the Linux kernel, just all the drivers. Well there is FBUI, but I think that is on the fringe. X could almost be thought of as a separate operating system on top at the moment, changing it to be just an app that deals with windows is a win to everyone. Especially the poor X developers.
The increase in cost is in the switching. Well that's nothing new. That's pretty much a one-time cost. After that training for new versions is going to be much cheaper, and with closed software you would also have to pay that. Difference is that once you have switched, you software costs drop to nothing, and you can choose whoever you want to do support/training as there is no lock in. That switching cost is something MS and others rely on, but it's a false economy to keep avoiding it.
You didn't read the article. They are running Linux, so malware and viruses aren't going to be anything like the problem. (You can argue it's due to being a small target platform, or better design, in this case it doesn't matter as the result is the same.) Scamming, no OS can help you there. Lets leave alone the issue if it labour's fault about the world economy...though I do agree it was caused by poor regulation and no regulation, but that trend was started before labour and is still established doctrine to many...
MS know they can't let any real Linux contender in (like Ubuntu) so they will offer a cheap (maybe even free) XP copy for each of these. Then they will say that people should learn software that is out in the real world, i.e Windows and Office. Of course, most of us are smart enough to know that a) it's only cheap/free while there is competition, b) MS software changes to, so people shouldn't learn specific software, but software in a more general sense.
Linux wireless is now pretty good, -after- the api was changed and the drivers refactored. This is pretty much the process happening now with the graphics drivers. Most points most people bring up have been addressed pretty conclusively by the old unstable api doc http://lxr.linux.no/#linux/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt
Market share has nothing to do with the unstable kernel api debate. Number of devices and architectures supported, and driver quality, does. If Linux had a stable it would encourage closed drivers, which would decrease the other all quality of, well everything. With an unstable kernel api, and drivers in the trunk, things can can be refactored to share more code, and work better. Recent example of this is wireless drivers. Linux wireless is now pretty good, >afterhttp://lxr.linux.no/#linux/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt
I've got 2 sound cards and a audio enabled webcam, making for 3 audio devices. It really does just work. I really dislike PA/ALSA, seams ugly and un-UNIX to me, but it does work. I dislike it so much, I tried OSSv4, but you can't escape ALSA, and OSSv4 ALSA's support is too slow for the machine I tried it on. So I'm stuck with PA/ALSA, but it does work and the wife has to use the machine too.;-)
I do, and we don't want it to stop. We don't want it ever to stop changing, we just don't want the changes to break everything. This is the state of drivers for other devices, so it can be done for graphics cards to. The aim with the changes with graphics is to make changes easier. The drivers will be smaller and share more code, X will be removed from the equation (bar a stable interface for things like X (and Wayland) to use).
Now sound I do agree there is a problem with, with little hope in sight. The problem though isn't one that hurts normal users, it works out the box, the problem is that the sound system isn't a Unix sound system. It could be a Windows sound system, or any OS, but it's not like a Unix one. Linux isn't a clean Unix, too many refugees from other platform making things before properly assimilated. That's my feelings anyway, I really don't like PA/ALSA, ugly as sin, but do work.
and yet it supports more devices on more architectures then any OS in history, and the only drivers that crash on my computer are the closed Nvidia ones? Error, does not compute.
I think there is a a lot of negativity going on here, but I don't think there needs to be. Gallium3D/KMS/DRM is moving along nicely, as are the drivers that use it. It's all new, but it is moving well, and at the end, the drivers will be easier to maintain with much more code sharing between them. This process also removes the drivers from X. This will make X development easier too, hopefully reinvigorating X development. It also makes X alterantives realistic possible, which is why all the excitement about Wayland. It's all a lot of big changes, and it's not finished. It's not surprising it's not perfect yet. Personally I can't wait for Nouveau to be able to take over from NVidia's closed drivers. People here are raving about them, but they crash about once a month for me, which is worse then any other driver on the system (non of which crash). You also get left behind with all the X development as NVidia don't take part. As the drivers start getting feature complete, optimization will be increasingly the new goal (stablity will always be a goal). This is happening! Nouveau has replaced nv, the open ATI and getting better all the time, and I expect Nouveau 3D to start becoming enabled as standard quite soon.
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ARM is more compact that a normal RISC architecture because most instructions are conditional and can have bit shift or rotations too. This doesn't just mean less instructions required to do common tasks, but it also means less branching, which isn't only faster, but again leads to less instructions as 'branches' can share instructions. In the old Acorn days I remember how much noise there was about how much more compact it was than x86. ARM isn't the RISC your daddy knew. Thumb just makes it even more compact, and unlike x86's instruction decoders, it can be powered off and not used.
x86 really problem is legacy. It has to be backwards compatible, ARM doesn't bother. You might says that's terrible, and people do, but they aren't thinking open source, where the repository can be just compiled for the different target as needed. The user doesn't need to know or care, they just do apt-get regardless. Or if, you are that way inclined, you could argue about Java/.NET bytecode making code compiled at run time achieving the same thing. Either way, you can free up the chip design from legacy.
I don't like graphics cards. It's a like a whole separate computer, with all that processing power and memory, not accessible from the main computer properly. It would be better to bring it all back to the centre. RAM is the best example of this. The graphics card can have nearly as much RAM as the rest of the system but day to day, my graphics needs are tiny. So why can't that RAM be used to cache disk, which would be much more useful to me. The processing power, ok, it's in the form of a bag of stream processors taking different instruction set to the CPU, but I'm sure it can be used for more than graphics. Yes there are APIs to do that already, and yes, we are clearly heading in this direction anyway. :-)
This doesn't take away DirectX or OpenGL, it just means you don't have to use them. It also means other, new breed, APIs can come along that generically use all that unified power, and don't care about make/model of hardware like graphics card. Like in the old days of software rending. Back then, the screen was just an address, and what you did with that address was up to you. You could use an off the shelf renders, but you where free to write some crazy thing of your own if you wanted. In Linux world, Gallium is interesting because it heading in this direction, making graphics APIs implementations hardware agnostic, but it doesn't have the game market to really go crazy with it. We could maybe hope for some crazy demos though.
Go on then, I'll bite.
That's not Linux's problem, it's Adobe's and the graphics card manufacturers. Loads of reimplimenting of closed stuff needs to happen for it to be Linux's fault. (That's Linux as a platform, not as just a kernel) With Gallium/DRM/KMS/Wayland/etc and HTML5 hopefully it will be Linux's problem and will all go away nicely. Having said all that, works ok for me now with the closed Flash player and the closed NVidia drivers. It's just unpalatable (and you are left in the slow lane of X developments, oh and booting is ugly and you can't switch virtual tty safely or fast).
Do many websites need a 64bit memory range? I don't think so. Big database servers and the like, yes, but I doubt many website servers.
Kind of like social benefits or welfare?
Have to say, even unemployed I'd still program, and I'd be doing much more open sourcey stuff than now.....;-)
I also have to say, what I see of people living lives of welfare, is there is a kind of hopelessness there. Like mass depression. The nasty-party/people-on-right say they are work shy or lazy, but I think many are depressed as much as anything. I know a few of the welfare kids on our street, and future jobs doesn't register. Even one, clearly mechanically gifted/skilled in some sense, the idea of working doing it hadn't even cross his mind. There is a feeling there is no jobs, and those that there are bad, don't pay well and go to other people anyway. The future is a dark hole, best think of today. No wonder so many get into trouble. But are they wrong? Is there future work for them? Personally, I feel, if we are paying people anyway, might as well extract value for that money, so in effect, a government job. Then use this work force for some inspiring projects, or at least social good projects. Love the idea of concentrating on GNH. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness
EXACTLY. If the Python devs leave 2.x too long and keep saying 3.x only, they will find someone will just fork 2.x and continue it. In free software you only get to make the rules while the community thinks they are good, or it's "fork you!" and the community goes elsewhere.
To me, all the supporting both 2.x and 3.x looks really messy, and why support 3.x if no one else does? Python 3 doesn't seam to be making any progress is taking over and I think it is because it's 2.x with the critical mass. In things as sprawling as languages backward compatibility is really really important. C++ was so successful because it piggy backed on C. Backwards compatibility means why not take it, you start with what you already have.
Quad-core ARM Cortex of some kind? Guessing more than a A9? Where are the real details about this chip?
LOL! Dude, check yours. This is the same processor as the SheevaPlug. I own a SheevaPlug, no FPU. Just google "SheevaPlug FPU". This might help: $cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor : Feroceon 88FR131 rev 1 (v5l)
BogoMIPS : 1192.75
Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp
CPU implementer : 0x56
CPU architecture: 5TE
CPU variant : 0x2
CPU part : 0x131
CPU revision : 1
Don't think so, but I think it's not going to be far off. The lack of open drivers is a big BUT for the tegra 2, because you know it's not going to come with anything Debian based, and that will be what I want.
This ARM doesn't have a FPU.
BeagleBoard or better still the A9 PandaBoard? CompuLab's TrimSlice (also A9)?
They are great, but I've had two power units fail on me. Rather then get a third the same, I've got it wired to a old router external power unit. There are so may pictures of melted power units, it's a very common problem. Maybe it is fixed now, but at least part of the problem was the air slots in the plastic case aren't always clear, sometimes completely seamed. That and cheap capacitor from what I've read. Great boxes let down by little things that matter.
;-)
Anyway, Beagleboard is old hat now, Pandaboard is the way forwards now.
The SheevaPlug has always been 1.2 GHz and had 512 DDR2 RAM.
Port wise, this seams like like GuruPlug version of the SheevaPlug. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GuruPlug
What would be much bigger deal is a better power unit. One less prone to melting. That is the biggest issue with the SheevaPlug family, other then that major failing, they are already pretty good.
I thought the criticism wasn't so much about the graphics drivers being in the kernel, as the windowing/GUI. No one is talking about moving windowing into the Linux kernel, just all the drivers. Well there is FBUI, but I think that is on the fringe. X could almost be thought of as a separate operating system on top at the moment, changing it to be just an app that deals with windows is a win to everyone. Especially the poor X developers.
Wouldn't it be great if this was true. I just can't believe it is. If something seams to good to be true.......well normally it is.
The increase in cost is in the switching. Well that's nothing new. That's pretty much a one-time cost. After that training for new versions is going to be much cheaper, and with closed software you would also have to pay that. Difference is that once you have switched, you software costs drop to nothing, and you can choose whoever you want to do support/training as there is no lock in. That switching cost is something MS and others rely on, but it's a false economy to keep avoiding it.
You didn't read the article. They are running Linux, so malware and viruses aren't going to be anything like the problem. (You can argue it's due to being a small target platform, or better design, in this case it doesn't matter as the result is the same.) Scamming, no OS can help you there. Lets leave alone the issue if it labour's fault about the world economy...though I do agree it was caused by poor regulation and no regulation, but that trend was started before labour and is still established doctrine to many...
MS know they can't let any real Linux contender in (like Ubuntu) so they will offer a cheap (maybe even free) XP copy for each of these. Then they will say that people should learn software that is out in the real world, i.e Windows and Office. Of course, most of us are smart enough to know that a) it's only cheap/free while there is competition, b) MS software changes to, so people shouldn't learn specific software, but software in a more general sense.
Sorry, posting error. Should have ended with:
Linux wireless is now pretty good, -after- the api was changed and the drivers refactored. This is pretty much the process happening now with the graphics drivers. Most points most people bring up have been addressed pretty conclusively by the old unstable api doc http://lxr.linux.no/#linux/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt
Sorry about that.
Market share has nothing to do with the unstable kernel api debate. Number of devices and architectures supported, and driver quality, does. If Linux had a stable it would encourage closed drivers, which would decrease the other all quality of, well everything. With an unstable kernel api, and drivers in the trunk, things can can be refactored to share more code, and work better. Recent example of this is wireless drivers. Linux wireless is now pretty good, >afterhttp://lxr.linux.no/#linux/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt
I've got 2 sound cards and a audio enabled webcam, making for 3 audio devices. It really does just work. I really dislike PA/ALSA, seams ugly and un-UNIX to me, but it does work. I dislike it so much, I tried OSSv4, but you can't escape ALSA, and OSSv4 ALSA's support is too slow for the machine I tried it on. So I'm stuck with PA/ALSA, but it does work and the wife has to use the machine too. ;-)
I do, and we don't want it to stop. We don't want it ever to stop changing, we just don't want the changes to break everything. This is the state of drivers for other devices, so it can be done for graphics cards to. The aim with the changes with graphics is to make changes easier. The drivers will be smaller and share more code, X will be removed from the equation (bar a stable interface for things like X (and Wayland) to use).
Now sound I do agree there is a problem with, with little hope in sight. The problem though isn't one that hurts normal users, it works out the box, the problem is that the sound system isn't a Unix sound system. It could be a Windows sound system, or any OS, but it's not like a Unix one. Linux isn't a clean Unix, too many refugees from other platform making things before properly assimilated. That's my feelings anyway, I really don't like PA/ALSA, ugly as sin, but do work.
and yet it supports more devices on more architectures then any OS in history, and the only drivers that crash on my computer are the closed Nvidia ones? Error, does not compute.
Stable API? Argh, this old argument. Been addressed so many times there is a doc in the trunk.
http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v2.6.37/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt
I think there is a a lot of negativity going on here, but I don't think there needs to be. Gallium3D/KMS/DRM is moving along nicely, as are the drivers that use it. It's all new, but it is moving well, and at the end, the drivers will be easier to maintain with much more code sharing between them. This process also removes the drivers from X. This will make X development easier too, hopefully reinvigorating X development. It also makes X alterantives realistic possible, which is why all the excitement about Wayland. It's all a lot of big changes, and it's not finished. It's not surprising it's not perfect yet. Personally I can't wait for Nouveau to be able to take over from NVidia's closed drivers. People here are raving about them, but they crash about once a month for me, which is worse then any other driver on the system (non of which crash). You also get left behind with all the X development as NVidia don't take part. As the drivers start getting feature complete, optimization will be increasingly the new goal (stablity will always be a goal). This is happening! Nouveau has replaced nv, the open ATI and getting better all the time, and I expect Nouveau 3D to start becoming enabled as standard quite soon.