It ain't gonna be long before the kiddies get tired of bragging about their PC's specs. Soon they'll be on to other things, like the tensile strength of their shoelaces. What ever happined to a good old arm wrasslin' match?
I'm quite happy to see that I'm not the only one that thinks a two-year-old machine is far from obsolete. Shucks, it wasn't more than three years ago when one of the key "features" of Linux was getting the power of unix at a very usable speed from a low-end 486 or any other machine that was choking under Windows 95. Lately, though, it seems every other l33t d00d lives just to own nothing older 6 months and brag about his insanely-high framerates at wasteful resolutions.
Though most of my company relies on commercial unix systems, we do have a great deal of x86 servers and workstations, some for work, some for play, and some hosting various projects for the community. Business, family, and friends included, we have been hard pressed to need anything faster than a 400 MHz Pentium II for pretty much any task. Most of us don't run Enlightenment or nutty screensavers, which allows a Pentium 233 w/ Matrox Millennium gfx to be quite a speedy workstation (provided it's got a 7200 rpm HD). 3D games are a bit of an exception, but even then, a 400 MHz K6-2 or 300 MHz PII with a Rage128/Voodoo3/TNT2 is more than enough to drive high framerates at 640x480 & 800x600 and whoop up on the kiddies playing Quake on Dad's 1 GHz Dell. I have friends that fight tooth and nail to keep up with the Joneses, which has allowed me to experience the "finer gaming experience". Aside from being a bit more responsive in large open areas with lots of action, I really can't tell much of a difference between an Athlon 650 w/ geForce and a 400 MHz K6-2 w/ Voodoo3. 32-bit color, maybe, but I would need to have the two machines side-by-side or look up screenshots on the web to really notice something that small. When I play games, I do so for the action and fun, not for the visual quality. For that I'll take a scenic drive or visit an art gallery. I won't pay $1000+ for a computer that does nothing more than draw prettier frames for a game. When I spend big money on a system it's for reliability, redundancy, and torque, not for playing games.
End Rant.
Not a clip tie. can't see the clip (yet can see the edge of his collar). tie just below know is twised a bit (moreso than any clip tie would be). Just a pretty good, tight knot.
thanks to cheap PS/2 extensions cables and a pair of 8 meter 13w3 video cables from UltraSpec. Did it mainly for space reasons in my cramped office, but it also keeps down the heat and noise from my Octane and Indigo2. Each has a ~750 watt power supply (ever seen the huge thick jumper cable connecting the GIO-64 backplane in the Indigo2 Impact to the power supply, scary!).
Nifty, been watching the site (and screenshots!) for some time now. Wonder if they will consider making a Solaris or IRIX build sometime once the dust clears? Outta be somone out there than can lend those folks a machine and compilers for a couple months. Parsec will certainly be a nice change of pace from xpilot and bzflag.
Personally, with the Linux-based solutions I've rigged up, I've always gone with a rolled-my-own home-brew distro or at least a heavily modified Debian. Trimming down and configuring Red Hat started taking too long ever since the 5.X days.
ugh, meant to say that I've used Linux since they days of the Red Hat 4.x distro. Didn't mean to sound like a 12-year-old L33T linux h4x0r that doesn't know the difference between distrobutions and kernels. I need my coffee.
I've used Solaris on SPARC since the days of SunOS 4.0 on a SPARCstation 10 and Linux on SPARC and x86 since around 4.x. I do have to agree that Linux/SPARC has been a godsend for older machines that are begging for a faster OS (such as a SPARCstation 1, 2, or even a SS20), but I have never seen Linux/SPARC outperform Solaris on any UltraSPARC-based Sun (Ultra 1 on up). Especially now with Solaris 8 6/00 (which feels even faster than Solaris 7, I don't really see any need for Linux on any Ultra. Perhaps there may be a situation with the Ultra 5 or 10 (same logic board) where the Linux IDE drivers work better than Sun's own, but I haven't witnessed this myself.
Themes are fun, especially on a home computer... Most of our Real Work these days is on plant control and status software for unix, where Motif is the standard. Because our latest project is to be deployed on Silicon Graphics systems (though with a Sun used for the actual interface to the various sensors, valves, and relays), I have been using OpenGL for all 2D and 3D graphics within the Motif-based apps, runs quite well. On our "coding room" bookshelf alone we have about 15 Motif reference books alone and probably just as many on X. Motif is a standard and is VERY well documented. When someone has to tear into the code 5, 10, 15 years down the line to add in another boiler or chiller into the control software, he's going to be quite happy to have that level of docs. While Qt and GTK are included in pretty much every modern linux distribution they just don't have the long-running acceptance and track record with the professional unix companies. Sun, HP, IBM, and SGI have long included Motif runtime libraries which have undergone many revisions and bug fixes. Even today companies such as Metro Link find and patch some of the remaining bugs. Motif has a clean, professional look (when used correctly), works well, and is not all *that* hard to develop with. For now it is certainly the choice of myself and a great deal of other developers that work on mission-critical projects with a projected lifespan in excess of 15 years.
We keep tkdesk on all of our machines (Sun, SGI, Linux). Several folks here like it and like to have the same interface on the various machines. Nifty, clean, and fast enough.
Though a great deal of my work is on SGI systems (4Dwm + a well configured toolchest and several xterms), I've been happy with fvwm(1) with a good root menu. These days I run CDE on my linux systems, though. (I work with many Motif-based apps, matches well, looks well, runs well, and keeps the Sun natives happy). Blackbox with a nicely configured root menu also works well. Clean and simple. Nice empty desktop, right (or center) click for all the apps you'll ever need. Need more, right-click, pick your xterm, and go to work.
It's great to see something that's both modern and runs well on older hardware. It wasn't too long ago when Linux was "the modern OS for folks with older hardware". With the latest WMs and desktop environments, not to manage the latest GUI libraries, it seems like a fella almost has to get a 300+ MHz box for a Linux workstation these days. (Doesn't sound like much, but that's quite a step up from a 486/100 or Pentium 233). Gotta love something that works great on an older system (albeit loaded with RAM).
Best monitor I can recommend is the Sony/SGI GDM 20E21. Made by Sony (20" Trinitron) and packaged and sold by Silicon Graphics (really cool gray/granite plastics with the SGI cube logo). Dual inputs (13w3 and HD15, switchable via the on-screen display). Works great on PCs, Macs, and Sun/SGI/HP unix machines. Handles all the way up to 1800x1440@80Hz, as well as all the way back down to DOS and BIOS resolutions. Reputable Systems has used 20E21s for $250. They're not all that old and in great condition, plus Greg (owner of Reputable) is an awesome guy. I should know, I've bought 4 from him!
X11perf is a pretty common synthetic 2D benchmark. A better choice would probably be 2D draw time for a CAD or pagelayout app (perhaps the linux beta of Adobe Framemaker). Two of my own benchmarks are "how does scrolling feel?" and "can I drag around solid windows without getting chop?".
Gotta love multiple desktops... or heads. I finally bought another monitor for my G400's second video port, don't think I could ever go back to a single head! Gotta have CodeWarrior (or CodeCrusader for folks on a budget) open on that second screen all day long.
I'm glad to see so many great desktop alternatives for Linux these days... doesn't seem like that long ago when fvwm(1) was one of the few good choices.
These days I use DeXtop, a Linux version of CDE sold and maintained by Xi Graphics. It works great along with their Accelerated X server, which I use with my Matrox G400. There have been all sorts of comments (good and bad) about Xi lately, I personally haven't had any problems with their products and AccelX feels a great deal faster than any other G400 drivers I've run across. Also, DeXtop has worked well for me on machines running XFree, not just Xi's AccelX. It's main requirement are glibc 2.1 libraries. Works well with GNOME/GTK and KDE/qt librariess, too.
For folks that want or need CDE, Motif, docs, and development tools but don't want to pay the $50 for DeXtop, Solaris X86 with Sun's linuxrun package may fit the bill for quite a bit less, perhaps even free.
The dock is based heavily on Cocoa and uses many 2D features from Quartz. Even if Apple released the source, there would be a great deal of the API framework needed to make it run. You're best off starting your own from scratch.
Why is everyone ganging up on the television industry? Complaing about commericals and the *gasp* cost of TV listings. I do belive you are the same people that pay to see movies in the theater, pay to purchase and rent videos, pay to buy the latest DVD boxed set. What do you have against the current television system? None of the money you've spent on your home theater goes towards content, just as the car you drive to the theater doesn't make a difference on the ticket price. If you want passive entertainment, it's going to cost you. How about you try to make a hit TV series on no budget and with no promise of ever being paid? The opensource idea does not work when you're talking about months of work, months of lodging and feeding, months of pre and post production work. Television and movies do indeed come at a cost which has to paid somewhere, and I don't think product placement alone will ever foot the entire bill.
The PowerBook 5300 and 190 series are quite old. Did Apple *have* to do this? Are there *any* PB 5300s still under warranty or other support contract? Sounds more like marketing and positive PR... though with those kinds of savings, and considering the features of the PowerBook G3 series, I'm not gonna complain.
Slashdot Mirror
It ain't gonna be long before the kiddies get tired of bragging about their PC's specs. Soon they'll be on to other things, like the tensile strength of their shoelaces. What ever happined to a good old arm wrasslin' match?
I'm quite happy to see that I'm not the only one that thinks a two-year-old machine is far from obsolete. Shucks, it wasn't more than three years ago when one of the key "features" of Linux was getting the power of unix at a very usable speed from a low-end 486 or any other machine that was choking under Windows 95. Lately, though, it seems every other l33t d00d lives just to own nothing older 6 months and brag about his insanely-high framerates at wasteful resolutions.
Though most of my company relies on commercial unix systems, we do have a great deal of x86 servers and workstations, some for work, some for play, and some hosting various projects for the community. Business, family, and friends included, we have been hard pressed to need anything faster than a 400 MHz Pentium II for pretty much any task. Most of us don't run Enlightenment or nutty screensavers, which allows a Pentium 233 w/ Matrox Millennium gfx to be quite a speedy workstation (provided it's got a 7200 rpm HD). 3D games are a bit of an exception, but even then, a 400 MHz K6-2 or 300 MHz PII with a Rage128/Voodoo3/TNT2 is more than enough to drive high framerates at 640x480 & 800x600 and whoop up on the kiddies playing Quake on Dad's 1 GHz Dell. I have friends that fight tooth and nail to keep up with the Joneses, which has allowed me to experience the "finer gaming experience". Aside from being a bit more responsive in large open areas with lots of action, I really can't tell much of a difference between an Athlon 650 w/ geForce and a 400 MHz K6-2 w/ Voodoo3. 32-bit color, maybe, but I would need to have the two machines side-by-side or look up screenshots on the web to really notice something that small. When I play games, I do so for the action and fun, not for the visual quality. For that I'll take a scenic drive or visit an art gallery. I won't pay $1000+ for a computer that does nothing more than draw prettier frames for a game. When I spend big money on a system it's for reliability, redundancy, and torque, not for playing games. End Rant.
Not a clip tie. can't see the clip (yet can see the edge of his collar). tie just below know is twised a bit (moreso than any clip tie would be). Just a pretty good, tight knot.
thanks to cheap PS/2 extensions cables and a pair of 8 meter 13w3 video cables from UltraSpec. Did it mainly for space reasons in my cramped office, but it also keeps down the heat and noise from my Octane and Indigo2. Each has a ~750 watt power supply (ever seen the huge thick jumper cable connecting the GIO-64 backplane in the Indigo2 Impact to the power supply, scary!).
Nifty, been watching the site (and screenshots!) for some time now. Wonder if they will consider making a Solaris or IRIX build sometime once the dust clears? Outta be somone out there than can lend those folks a machine and compilers for a couple months. Parsec will certainly be a nice change of pace from xpilot and bzflag.
this is like giving a ten-year-old a loaded M-16
or DEC Unix.... whatever it's called this week
'nuff said
Personally, with the Linux-based solutions I've rigged up, I've always gone with a rolled-my-own home-brew distro or at least a heavily modified Debian. Trimming down and configuring Red Hat started taking too long ever since the 5.X days.
seems like half of the slashdot posters are hooked on "Stupid Pills" or some sort of substance that cuts their IQ in half
and Linux on SPARC and x86 since around 4.x.
ugh, meant to say that I've used Linux since they days of the Red Hat 4.x distro. Didn't mean to sound like a 12-year-old L33T linux h4x0r that doesn't know the difference between distrobutions and kernels. I need my coffee.
I've used Solaris on SPARC since the days of SunOS 4.0 on a SPARCstation 10 and Linux on SPARC and x86 since around 4.x. I do have to agree that Linux/SPARC has been a godsend for older machines that are begging for a faster OS (such as a SPARCstation 1, 2, or even a SS20), but I have never seen Linux/SPARC outperform Solaris on any UltraSPARC-based Sun (Ultra 1 on up). Especially now with Solaris 8 6/00 (which feels even faster than Solaris 7, I don't really see any need for Linux on any Ultra. Perhaps there may be a situation with the Ultra 5 or 10 (same logic board) where the Linux IDE drivers work better than Sun's own, but I haven't witnessed this myself.
see subject
Themes are fun, especially on a home computer... Most of our Real Work these days is on plant control and status software for unix, where Motif is the standard. Because our latest project is to be deployed on Silicon Graphics systems (though with a Sun used for the actual interface to the various sensors, valves, and relays), I have been using OpenGL for all 2D and 3D graphics within the Motif-based apps, runs quite well. On our "coding room" bookshelf alone we have about 15 Motif reference books alone and probably just as many on X. Motif is a standard and is VERY well documented. When someone has to tear into the code 5, 10, 15 years down the line to add in another boiler or chiller into the control software, he's going to be quite happy to have that level of docs. While Qt and GTK are included in pretty much every modern linux distribution they just don't have the long-running acceptance and track record with the professional unix companies. Sun, HP, IBM, and SGI have long included Motif runtime libraries which have undergone many revisions and bug fixes. Even today companies such as Metro Link find and patch some of the remaining bugs. Motif has a clean, professional look (when used correctly), works well, and is not all *that* hard to develop with. For now it is certainly the choice of myself and a great deal of other developers that work on mission-critical projects with a projected lifespan in excess of 15 years.
We keep tkdesk on all of our machines (Sun, SGI, Linux). Several folks here like it and like to have the same interface on the various machines. Nifty, clean, and fast enough.
Though a great deal of my work is on SGI systems (4Dwm + a well configured toolchest and several xterms), I've been happy with fvwm(1) with a good root menu. These days I run CDE on my linux systems, though. (I work with many Motif-based apps, matches well, looks well, runs well, and keeps the Sun natives happy). Blackbox with a nicely configured root menu also works well. Clean and simple. Nice empty desktop, right (or center) click for all the apps you'll ever need. Need more, right-click, pick your xterm, and go to work.
It's great to see something that's both modern and runs well on older hardware. It wasn't too long ago when Linux was "the modern OS for folks with older hardware". With the latest WMs and desktop environments, not to manage the latest GUI libraries, it seems like a fella almost has to get a 300+ MHz box for a Linux workstation these days. (Doesn't sound like much, but that's quite a step up from a 486/100 or Pentium 233). Gotta love something that works great on an older system (albeit loaded with RAM).
Best monitor I can recommend is the Sony/SGI GDM 20E21. Made by Sony (20" Trinitron) and packaged and sold by Silicon Graphics (really cool gray/granite plastics with the SGI cube logo). Dual inputs (13w3 and HD15, switchable via the on-screen display). Works great on PCs, Macs, and Sun/SGI/HP unix machines. Handles all the way up to 1800x1440@80Hz, as well as all the way back down to DOS and BIOS resolutions. Reputable Systems has used 20E21s for $250. They're not all that old and in great condition, plus Greg (owner of Reputable) is an awesome guy. I should know, I've bought 4 from him!
X11perf is a pretty common synthetic 2D benchmark. A better choice would probably be 2D draw time for a CAD or pagelayout app (perhaps the linux beta of Adobe Framemaker). Two of my own benchmarks are "how does scrolling feel?" and "can I drag around solid windows without getting chop?".
Gotta love multiple desktops... or heads. I finally bought another monitor for my G400's second video port, don't think I could ever go back to a single head! Gotta have CodeWarrior (or CodeCrusader for folks on a budget) open on that second screen all day long.
I'm glad to see so many great desktop alternatives for Linux these days... doesn't seem like that long ago when fvwm(1) was one of the few good choices.
These days I use DeXtop, a Linux version of CDE sold and maintained by Xi Graphics. It works great along with their Accelerated X server, which I use with my Matrox G400. There have been all sorts of comments (good and bad) about Xi lately, I personally haven't had any problems with their products and AccelX feels a great deal faster than any other G400 drivers I've run across. Also, DeXtop has worked well for me on machines running XFree, not just Xi's AccelX. It's main requirement are glibc 2.1 libraries. Works well with GNOME/GTK and KDE/qt librariess, too.
For folks that want or need CDE, Motif, docs, and development tools but don't want to pay the $50 for DeXtop, Solaris X86 with Sun's linuxrun package may fit the bill for quite a bit less, perhaps even free.
My $0.04 (I rambled on a bit).
The dock is based heavily on Cocoa and uses many 2D features from Quartz. Even if Apple released the source, there would be a great deal of the API framework needed to make it run. You're best off starting your own from scratch.
Why is everyone ganging up on the television industry? Complaing about commericals and the *gasp* cost of TV listings. I do belive you are the same people that pay to see movies in the theater, pay to purchase and rent videos, pay to buy the latest DVD boxed set. What do you have against the current television system? None of the money you've spent on your home theater goes towards content, just as the car you drive to the theater doesn't make a difference on the ticket price. If you want passive entertainment, it's going to cost you. How about you try to make a hit TV series on no budget and with no promise of ever being paid? The opensource idea does not work when you're talking about months of work, months of lodging and feeding, months of pre and post production work. Television and movies do indeed come at a cost which has to paid somewhere, and I don't think product placement alone will ever foot the entire bill.
...riding on the back of a Fiend all the way through the game! Check out Fiend Run Lite, my favorite Quake Done Quick variation.
http://www.planetquake.com/qdq/frl.html
The PowerBook 5300 and 190 series are quite old. Did Apple *have* to do this? Are there *any* PB 5300s still under warranty or other support contract? Sounds more like marketing and positive PR... though with those kinds of savings, and considering the features of the PowerBook G3 series, I'm not gonna complain.