i too have mixed feelings on the progeny debian beta. i am currently a debian user and considered trying progeny's distro, but decided there were not that many features that i would benifit from. i think though that progeny will probably be very sucessful because they will have the power of the debian community, vast amount of packaged software, and the far superior packaging system.
i only fear that progeny has come into the game a little late. i will talk a little about some of the good things progeny will bring to debian. first and foremost they will remove some of the mystisism about using debian. many new linux user's don't use debian due to the more archaic installer, and also because the documentation is harder to come by. progeny will sport an easier install and better hardware detection, which will inturn attract more users. progeny will also provide the latest software from woody, but in a stable form. i imagine the selection of software will probably be similar to the current, but little known, testing version of debian. having the newer software that redhat, mandrake, and other distributions have released will increase interest from users of other distro's that previously would not use debian due to the thought that it is out of date.
what interest me most about progeny though is their linux now (network of worskstations) project. linux now will be a highly scalable implemenation for managing distributed computing enviroments. it will be an out of the box solution for easier system administration. it does this by creating the appearance of a single computer which will actually consist of many. this gives a consist look and feel to both the end user and the administrators. it is supposed to be simple, and highly configurable. something one doesn't often find in the same piece of software... the neatest feature though will be the ability to use process migration to minimize lost cpu cycles, and provide more cpu power.
i am not ready to make the switch to progeny yet, but i will definately keep my eyes open.
i found some information about the keybowl. this is actually a very interesting device. the following pdf has lots of information about how it works, and also includes some sketches. http://www.c-60.org/keybowl.pdf
...unless the principality of sealand has found itself quite close to conshohocken, pennsylvania, usa.
[root@hydra/root]# traceroute www.havenco.com <snip> 10 pennsauken.netaxs.com (192.157.69.47) 52.800 ms 62.689 ms 69.065 ms 11 l3-psk-t3-l.netaxs.net (207.106.3.201) 64.130 ms 51.568 ms 43.537 ms 12 l3-consh-t3-l.netaxs.net (207.106.3.193) 105.847 ms 79.604 ms 52.046 ms 13 ns1.havenco.com (207.106.32.14) 47.845 ms 40.472 ms 90.635 ms
You are right, 256 MB is a little weak. My personal computer has 384 MB of RAM... The motherboard they used for the test was an Iwill DCA200. This board will support up to 2 GB of RAM. I think the reason that they only used 256 MB was because that much RDRAM memory runs about $1,100. Peguin Computing has an 8-way Xeon system that will support up to 32 GB of ECC SDRAM memory. I am sure there are other x86 based machines like this, but I don't know of any off hand.
The guys at the Linux Video Project have been working on an Open Source DVD Player (among other things). Their DVD player looks like it will be great, but still needs some work in the performance area. I also suggest you check out their DVD Playing HOWTO.
Here are some SPEC CPU95 Benchmark results. Sorry they are not the latest greatest processors, but this is the most recent I could find.
Processor (Floating Point (SPECfp95), Integer (SPECint95)) Digital Alpha 750 MHz (75, 38) Intel Pentium III 800 MHz (32.4, 38.9) AMD K7 Athlon 750 MHz (33.0, 26.5)
As you can see the Alpha really whips the P3 and Athlon, but the pricing for Alphas is also rediculous. The motherboard and processor for an Alpha 750 will likely run two or three thousand dollars. A P3 800 will run about $750 for just the processor, and an Athlon 750 will be aproximately $320. For price/performance Athlon is definately the winner.
Actually, current IDE drives are about the same speed as curent scsi drives. The SCSI drives have high rotational rates (measured in RPM) and latency, and the IDE drives have much higher. Areal Density (loosely measured in GB per platter).
From my experience the best scsi drives are significantly faster than the best ide drives. My Quantum Atlas 10k transfers 25.1 MB/s when tested with 'hdparm -t/dev/sda'. The best I have seen out of an ide was 17.0 MB/s from an IBM Deskstar 22GXP.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.c-60.org/starwars_legos /sw orde.htm
i only fear that progeny has come into the game a little late. i will talk a little about some of the good things progeny will bring to debian. first and foremost they will remove some of the mystisism about using debian. many new linux user's don't use debian due to the more archaic installer, and also because the documentation is harder to come by. progeny will sport an easier install and better hardware detection, which will inturn attract more users. progeny will also provide the latest software from woody, but in a stable form. i imagine the selection of software will probably be similar to the current, but little known, testing version of debian. having the newer software that redhat, mandrake, and other distributions have released will increase interest from users of other distro's that previously would not use debian due to the thought that it is out of date.
what interest me most about progeny though is their linux now (network of worskstations) project. linux now will be a highly scalable implemenation for managing distributed computing enviroments. it will be an out of the box solution for easier system administration. it does this by creating the appearance of a single computer which will actually consist of many. this gives a consist look and feel to both the end user and the administrators. it is supposed to be simple, and highly configurable. something one doesn't often find in the same piece of software... the neatest feature though will be the ability to use process migration to minimize lost cpu cycles, and provide more cpu power.
i am not ready to make the switch to progeny yet, but i will definately keep my eyes open.
i found some information about the keybowl. this is actually a very interesting device. the following pdf has lots of information about how it works, and also includes some sketches.
http://www.c-60.org/keybowl.pdf
umm, scratch that. these are just debs for libw3c, a dependency for nautilus.
yes, there are debian packages. i already have them on my mirror:
ftp://ftp.c-60.org/pub/nautilus/
http://www.c-60.org/pub/nautilus/
ftp://ftp.c-60.org/pub/nautilus/ http://www.c-60.org/pub/nautilus/
whoops, slash mangled my link. this time it works
http://www.c-60.org/msad.jpg
http://www.c-60.org/msad.jpg
check it out:
ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.pur due.edu/pub/redhat/redhat-7.0/
http://csociety-ftp.ecn.p urdue.edu/pub/redhat/redhat-7.0/
I am not scared of Digital:Convergence, they have nothing to stand on...
/cuecat/
http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~porterds
...unless the principality of sealand has found itself quite close to conshohocken, pennsylvania, usa.
/root]# traceroute www.havenco.com
[root@hydra
<snip>
10 pennsauken.netaxs.com (192.157.69.47) 52.800 ms 62.689 ms 69.065 ms
11 l3-psk-t3-l.netaxs.net (207.106.3.201) 64.130 ms 51.568 ms 43.537 ms
12 l3-consh-t3-l.netaxs.net (207.106.3.193) 105.847 ms 79.604 ms 52.046 ms
13 ns1.havenco.com (207.106.32.14) 47.845 ms 40.472 ms 90.635 ms
I have a fast mirror site here: ftp://ftp.c-60.org/pub/mozilla/
You are right, 256 MB is a little weak. My personal computer has 384 MB of RAM... The motherboard they used for the test was an Iwill DCA200. This board will support up to 2 GB of RAM. I think the reason that they only used 256 MB was because that much RDRAM memory runs about $1,100. Peguin Computing has an 8-way Xeon system that will support up to 32 GB of ECC SDRAM memory. I am sure there are other x86 based machines like this, but I don't know of any off hand.
[ebola@hydra soffice]$ ls -lh
total 175M
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ebola ebola 89M Apr 7 11:50 so52beta_linux_01.tar
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ebola ebola 86M Apr 7 12:12 so52beta_linux_01.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.c-60.org/pub/soffice/
Here is my mirror:
ftp://ftp.c-60.org/pub/netscape/
The Netscape ftp servers appear to have died... I have mirrored the it on my server: ftp://ftp.c-60.org/pub/netscape/
The guys at the Linux Video Project have been working on an Open Source DVD Player (among other things). Their DVD player looks like it will be great, but still needs some work in the performance area. I also suggest you check out their DVD Playing HOWTO.
Here are some SPEC CPU95 Benchmark results. Sorry they are not the latest greatest processors, but this is the most recent I could find.
Processor (Floating Point (SPECfp95), Integer (SPECint95))
Digital Alpha 750 MHz (75, 38)
Intel Pentium III 800 MHz (32.4, 38.9)
AMD K7 Athlon 750 MHz (33.0, 26.5)
As you can see the Alpha really whips the P3 and Athlon, but the pricing for Alphas is also rediculous. The motherboard and processor for an Alpha 750 will likely run two or three thousand dollars. A P3 800 will run about $750 for just the processor, and an Athlon 750 will be aproximately $320. For price/performance Athlon is definately the winner.
ftp://ftp.c-60.org/pub/beos/
From my experience the best scsi drives are significantly faster than the best ide drives. My Quantum Atlas 10k transfers 25.1 MB/s when tested with 'hdparm -t /dev/sda'. The best I have seen out of an ide was 17.0 MB/s from an IBM Deskstar 22GXP.