Well, as much as I hate to admit it, MIPS Pro 7.3 is a pretty dang good compiler. I would be happy enough if SGI open sourced IRIX, Red Hat sent Alan Cox to SGI and got him working full time to get the best of IRIX into Linux, and replaced IRIX with Linux.
But, GCC is no where near as good a compiler is MIPS Pro 7.3 for thier hardware.
I've seen a brand new Origin 200 crash once a week. If I can find the logs for that would you want to see them?
The older SGI's we have here without IRIX updated run fine, 100% stable (including a Personal Iris, still going strong). Indy's got a little funny when we went 5.x to 6.x, but are OK now. Indigo is fine. Octane (one of the newest we have) is doing so-so, no problems yet. Origin 200 has been a nightmear. So, it's hit and miss. If you want relyable, I guess you need to look at the older ones, and older versions of IRIX... I think I agree there is a trend that SGI's hardware and software quality is going downhill.
But I am not sure I would go as far as as the poster did.... Well, maybe, but it's hard not to like SGI, like your first true love or something. I guess I don't think at this point I would choose to buy one personally if I were out shopping for something in thier price range for my own, but once upon a time, I would have LOVED to own one.
IRIX is a rock-solid OS, and I cannot imagine using Linux on a production workstation at this point.
I have used IRIX since 1993. I have used Linux since 1997. In January of 1998, I might have agreed. As for the whole calander year of 1999, I have spent about 85% more time using Linux, and about 4% of my time using IRIX (and about 0.1% using DEC-UNIX), and about 10% of my time using FreeBSD. Of the time I spend trying to track bugs, and figure out where errors are comeing from, it's about 50/50 IRIX/Linux. Considering how little I use IRIX, that's probably more time tracking bugs than actual use.
To tell the truth, I now 4 people here who use IRIX as thier primary workstation OS, and they would opt out if they had a choice. Conclusing, I think today in 1999, I would completely dissagree with the statement "IRIX is a rock-solid OS, and I cannot imagine using Linux on a production workstation at this point."
We have had this problem too, I think I might be able to pull up a log by this afternoon to post if you want to see it. Haven't fixed it yet:-( anyone that knows a solution, PLEASE let me know. I know we lost overnight numbercrunching data at least twice.
First you all complain that people are starting to think "Red Hat Linux = Linux."
Then Red Hat _might_ make a move to make people qualify thier products as "unoffical Red Hat" which is clearly distinguishing them from the rest of Linux.
Now, after Red Hat makes an effort to make it clear to even clueless newbies that they are mearly _one_ of the distributions of Linux, and that "Offical Red Hat" is diffrent from "Unoffical Red Hat," people are whining again.
I'm starting to think the SlashDot/Linux community just won't be happy with _anything_ Red Hat does now.
This is a great move for them, and for Debian, and for Slackware. They are doing thier best to make it clear that they are a _distribution_ of linux, and that doesn't meant that Linux = Red Hat. They are makeing it clear that "we will allow you to copy and redistribute, to a point, but don't do something that will make users expect to get tech support from us if they buy a copied version from you."
Seems like some of you are reacting to this like you expect Red Hat to provide phone support to every user in the Universe. Worse yet, some are actually starting to say that they shouldn't have the right to regulate the use of thier name. If you say Red Hat can't regulate the use of thier product name, how would you like it if they turned the tables on you, and said the same about the use of the word "Linux" itself, and said "Red Hat _IS_ Linux"... you wouldn't have a leg to stand on if you told them how they can and can't use thier own name.
Lighten up, this is an issue of a series of schmucks selling $2 CD's in online auctions trying to get $70+ (More than the price of the offical version), and leaving clueless bidders believeing they will get support (which they won't). Red Hat is not only protecting itself, they are protecting Linux by keeping people from getting angry and disappointed during thier first experiance with Linux.
He left because they have nothing exciting going on, and everyone was looking for something new and amazing from them. He's bailing out before he gets pined as the guy in charge when they fall flat on thier face.:-)
Gotta admit, there is no basis for this guess, but what basis do you have for Amiga using a Transmeta Super CPU, and becoming the ultimate graphic workstation of the year 2000? People seem to believe that with no evidence, why not just accept they are doing nothing exciting at all?
Sorry, I don't see what your talking about. Your writing is unclear, and fails to even imply to a tangable piece of evidence.
I don't know who works for Cisco, or what thier like. But, it would take a lot more than this rubbish to make me believe something was wrong.
Simply sounds like the rantings of a lunitic. Anyone know what the heck this guy is talking about? If there is a point in there, I would like to know what it is.
I love this comment. I know it's a personal slam against me, but it makes me acutally laugh cause it's soo true.
Heh... to respond... It's called "armchair quarterbacking." Sort of an American past-time. Yea, it's lame, yea, it's silly, but... it can be fun too.
Almost like Anonymous Coward in this case could be Bob Young himself... or better, Bill Gates. Soo true, eveyone has an opinion, I'm just making myself a little more visable so it's clearer to all how far I can really shove my foot in my mouth;-)
I've been in school WAY too long... It's about time for me to get out of the chair, and shut the hell up, and start doing something myself.
Really? IPO brought in $$ that are numbers I am not use to counting up to, sure haven't seen than many 000's in a long time. Uh, Considering thier "worth" and the cost of paying someone to develop say, KOffice full time, it's not a big expendature. KOffice will be developed with or without Red Hat. If they negociate a salary or contract with the people who are already developeing it so they could do it full time, I doubt it would make a big dent in thier budget. If they try to do it "in house" it would be stupid, they need to just support the people who already are use to doing it for free.
open up the RPM standard
Did I imply they were closed? I have looked inside them, I know there not. I know RPMs can do a whole lot more than Red Hat does with them on a regular basis.;-) And, RPM is not that difficult to work with, I've rolled a few, never found it that hard. Matter of fact, when you really look into the specs for them, you can see that there is enough in there that most people can benifit from them, and.src.rpm (find your rpmrc, change your flags, feel the speed...). Dependancacy headaches might need a tweak of the format (but frequent releases of CD sets would make up for it on the short term end).
Compaq *AND* Dell already HAVE partnerships with RedHat.
Again, fully aware of that. But I don't think that I would agree the partnerships are being as exploited as they should be. When I see more than "oh, we ship a couple products with Red Hat, what's a kernel optimization?" maybe I will think it's actually making a differance like it should.
Nice to see you get soo excited though. Too bad I have to write most of you comments off, you seem a little to pre-occupied with degrading the distribution to be taken seriously about how to get them to be a successfull buisness. To be expected I suppose, not everyone wants to see Red Hat succeed.... Lots of people want to see it fail.
Can't wait till RedCrap switches to AIX-style licensing. "A two-user RedHat 7.0 license is now $80. A four-user license is now $200..."
Heh, yea, great idea, and let the #1 selling open source project shoot it self in the foot, loose it's GPL community support, and follow the buisness plans of the 1970's in the comming century... There's a model for growth. Well, growth of some grass over the grave of the company anyhow, because it will be a nice peacefull resting place with few visitors.
Red Hat is NOT, Not, not, not, your traditional UNIX. Red Hat is tetering on mass market apeal. Red Hat needs to make things efficent like no ones buisness, and yes, that means "Give you a reliable product at a fair price?!". If they don't, thier ethics will be in question BIG time, and people WILL be able to call them "the next Microsoft" and get away with it. (Yet another reason to break the molds of traditional software houses, and start using a buisness model that is more closely suited to open source, that being a "publishing house" model). 75 cents a copy for the local paper, my gosh, there is no way these people can be making money...;-P Yea, RIGHT...
Next time, research before writing.
Why do I respond to trolls...;-) Your right, I should do some research, it is my job after all, but it involves VOC extraction, HSGC, and Henrys Law... Aparently you have mistaken me for a journalist, or someone who gives a crap about what holes there are in the story. Soo sorry I didn't hand hold you and tell you in detail where all the holes in GCC w/ Alpha are, and why Dell and Compaq partenerships are weak, and what Red Hat's financial resources are to be spent on growth, and why SuSE is happy with RPMs but developers aren't because of compatibility issues, and how development dollars can be used wisely vs. squandered, and why making news by making market moves makes sence in the trifold aspect of getting good press-gaining community support-filling thier current product lackings. I guess I assumed that most intellegent readers would already know these things, and be able to fill in the gaps rather than read a 20 page essay with footnotes.
Actually, as fun as it is to sit here and debait, I gotta cut it off here, seeing as how I highly doubt that it'll make a differance.
BTW, no offence taken, least I got someone off thier butt and got them to think about if Open Source is viable at all in the marketplace, even if they don't want to think about it.
Also, for the subscription method. If Red Hat did that, they would die. Simply because stores do not want to sell something that will make people not come back. They want to sell a physical product that means that people will come back to the store. If Red Hat offered a subscription service, not as many stores would carry it. This would severely hurt Red Hat since they are currently very reliant on stores. It's the same reason they have the no-support option only availible online--they don't want to confuse customers or annoy stores
Wait, stores carry magizines, and news papers, why wouldn't they want a product that a subscription. Say, $30 a copy insted of $100 for a four copy subscription.
If anything, I think stores would be MORE likely to carry it, because they know the shelf life dates. They wouldn't have the fear that it will sit forever, they could only order a few copies at a time, and less right before they know a new issue will come out.
My school bookstore for one has stocked boxed copies of Red Hat right before the upgrade from 5.0 to 5.1, right before 5.1 to 5.2, and right before 6.0 too. I KNOW first hand they are pissed off because they are always a step behind, and Red Hat already releases faster than other software on the shelf and its an unpredictiable schedule. They don't mind other software as much, but Red Hat has made them look stupid.
On the other hand, even the grocery store carries magizines and other periodicals, because they know if they don't sell, next month they will buy less copies, and the shelf life is known.
Red Hat partner with both Dell, Gateway, and Compaq, and get in there and really gain a market for thier OS.
Then I'd like to see VA Research IPO, be a HUGE success, then buyout SGI and Caldera. Now, that would be a Linux market. VA could bolster Caldera enough to make it more head to head with Red Hat, and SGI would fit in thier product line pretty well, giving them MIPS to add to the Intel line.
Then all the "extra" vendors out there could fill in the gaps with AMD systems. Like... Penguin Computing and Mandrake... Yea... Hey.. let's pair everyone up...
$950 for 5 Incident Support Package through Red Hat, $35,000 for thier Silver Support Package, not exactly the greatest bargins, Red Hat needs to come up with a stream line mass market support system.
SGI is loosing ground, and support is one of thier lackings. SGI using Red Hat was thier solution, and it's not working as you can tell from the $16 to $11 drop. SGI's MIPS products are solid on the hardware side, but just troll the SGI newsgroups, and you will find users are very unhappy with IRIX. It's not that UNIX in general is giving them problems, but SGI's problems with IRIX, various bugs, chaos in patches and updates, nightmear upgrade stories, etc.
Buying SGI would only give Red Hat another Support headache, just when they really need to get thier support more streamline, and focus it on a mass market. It would be a move in the wrong direction.
Now, someone like Compaq or Dell on the other hand would be an excellent place to form a "partnership" on a long term scale. Red Hat needs to get in tight with one of the Intel based hardware vendors that can help them scale up to 2+ CPU servers with RAID on one hand, and looking down towards laptops and PDAs on the other hand. Those are some areas where the growth would be a little less painful. And a "partnership" rather than a "buyout" would allow them to gain some "help" and not "aquire the headache."
If SGI is to get back on it's feet, it needs to do it on it's own. It's not thier hardware that is lacking, it's thier management. The few good techs never seen to see the light of day, or leave for other companies. The bad techs answer the phones and go to trade shows. Bad marketing, bad service, bad customer relations, and overpriced service/support contracts for a product that ends up a major headache for many consumers is going to keep driving them even lower than $11. Keep waiting for them to "bottom out" and get bought by someone like Compaq or Dell, who have proved they CAN handle the hardware buisness in todays market.
I think you read their subscription information wrong, that's a subscription to a support contract, not for media alone.
A huge number of peopl would not want their "Silver Support" subscription with a $35,000 price tag!!
I am talking about CDROM.COM style subscriptions, to the MEDIA, not the support. Red Hat could easily use it's financial resources to put out a quarterly distribution that included all the latest and greatest applications and information on a CD for under $100 a year (which would still be outrageously high priced for a total of maybe 8 CD's a year, which would probably cost them $1-2 per CD to produce).
They should be maintaining a solid base of applications anyhow for thier product, and batch runs on a CD burner that would crank out some disks to drop in the mail with a little "product brocher" or something would make good marketing sense for them (because it would provide them with the information they need to know about who might be willing to pay for at least the media, Plus, give them a direct way to let thier users know what new products and services like support contracts were avaliable).
If AOL and Microsoft can send out Free CD's to people a few times a year without cost to get people to just consider using thier browser or internet service, I would sure think Red Hat could use a mechinism like this to keep in contact with thier "bulk" customers, and provide a valuable service at a reasonable price.
What if Red Hat bought SCO? Who Cares. What if Pigs had Wings? Now there is something just as idiotic, but interesting too!
Using thier money to "Aquire" more property is not the way of Red Hat. That is just plain stupid, and, only ONE of the suggestions in the article.
I call you attention to item number 5, intitled "Tools." Ahhhh... People use applications, not OS's... Hmmm...
Red Hat has money, now, if they want to keep the support of the Open Source Community they need to:
Dump resources into GCC, if GCC dies, Linux dies with it.
Dump resources into a GPL office suite, without KOffice or a Gnome Office, or some other open source office suite, in a few years everyone will just be downloading Red Hat for free, and buying a $400 copy of Microsoft Office for Linux every year.
Make what they have now work better. One of the most commonly used applications that ships with Red Hat is Netscape, you would think that Red Hat would have an intrest in getting all the plugins and bells and whistles working out of the box, so thier customers have something usefull after installation.
Subscription Plans Ditch the $60 box set whenever we feel like releasing something new, and be up front and honest. Sell a "Subscription to Red Hat Linux" for about $100 that includes 4 complete CD sets per year, that come out on a regular schedule, and are sure to have the most up to date software from the whole GPL community. People with a lot of bandwidth don't usually buy a boxed set anyway, so give the people without bandwidth the product they really want! (and if you offer to throw in a "emergency patchs" CD in once in a while for major security issues, the cost of an extra $5 CD per customer will probably be sure to get you thousands of people standing in line to pay $100 a year for a subscription that insures security).
Cygnus...not SCO If you insist on "buying someone out" at least buy some one with integrity...
Ever take a good honest look at the number of grocery stores, 7-11 type stores, and fast food stores in diffrent neighborhoods?
To apply pure logic, one would think that low income areas would be the places where families needed to cook economical meals, and spend less in restraunts and convenient stores (meaning 24 hour a day corner stores with prices 3x what grocery stores charge). So, you might try to take a logical leap, and say "There are probably less convenient stores and restraunts in low income areas." BBBBBBzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Wrong answer.
7-11 and McDonalds have known for a long long long time that low income areas are good markets for them to expand into.
While we would all like to sit here "High And Mighty" saying how wonderful internet access is, and how people of a certian income or color need to have it, that's not how the world works.
If they want it, they will get it. Before you say they can't, check if they have cable, and how often they dine in a restraunt. Then look at the $9.95/month internet service ads and $399 computer that are on about every third page of thier local newspapers. Do you truely believe that there are people out there who choose to have internet, but can't get it (but somehow can have cable TV, eat in Burger King or McDonalds daily, have a $800 car stereo, etc...).
Now, I am not saying that people of a ethnic background, or people of an income level all have made a choice to be that way. Not at all. I just think it's a little short sighted to say it's color or income that prevents people from getting on the internet. As for evidence, I think McDonalds and 7-11 have pretty well defined where they can make a profit, why not deal with a basic need like food first?
Why would the internet be any diffrent than dining habits, cable TV, or anything else? I guess maybe I am not seeing this as a color thing, because the only clear thing I can see about the internet is income levels, maybe. But I would agree that the internet isn't for everyone, just like everything else.
Not everyone watches CNN, not everyone reads the Wall Street Journal, not everyone goes to college... Making the government pay for access so that everyone could isn't going to mean everyone will, and that everyone will benifit from it. All it will mean is that you gave the government more control over a part of your life, and another reason to justify taking more money for "taxes" out of your paycheck.
(BTW, I believe in the LP which is my primary reason to object to seeing making another government run program a bad thing, nothing to do with race, color, money, any of that.. We don't live in a free country anymore at all, if you think so, you have confused freedom with democracy. Democracy is just orginized mob rule, which can be as bad or worse as tyrany. What if tomarrow the majority desides that we should all drive Mini-Vans? Because "the people vote for it" or "it will make life safer and more consistant" doesn't mean it has anything to do with freedom. And yes, there isn't a country in the world I would rather be in, I like it here, I just think we're slipping a little bit into "we should be like the EU" Freedom does mean not opressing people of any race, religion, sex, or income. Socialism is a diffrent belief, which intends to insure that everyone be given similar goods and treatment, and calling that fair. Freedom allow one to benifit from thier own hard work, if you want to free the oppressed, give them the chances just like everyone else. If you want socialism, thier are plenty of other countries to choose from.)
I have seen all the arguments about how we are loosing our privacy, and our lives are becoming more and more public as a result of technology. Personally, I haven't seen any big changes in my life.
I'll tell you what I have noticed. I just got back from a 4 day trip out of town, got home, and found 84 messages in my email Inbox. 3 from cron, 4 from people I know. Well over 70 of the messages were spam.
Any time anyone wants personal information about you, beware. It's not that they will see your every move. It's not that they will know what you eat and change your health insurance rates. It's not that they are going to tell your mom where you were last Friday night. What they will do is _eventually_ sell the information.
Information is a commodity, and if they tell you they want it to provide you better service, tell them your happy with the service you get now. "Better Service" is a nice way to say "Targeted Direct Marketing." And for the slow witted, "Targeted Direct Marketing" is sales calls when your eating dinner, 70+ spam mails to sort through when your trying to see what your boss said happened at work when your out of town, and a dozens of dead trees sliced up to make coupons to fill your mail box.
I will choose not to buy from ANYONE who collects such data if I am aware of it. Not because I think they will end up "peeping" or "reporting on me to an athority." I don't think I have anything to hide, but the more junk mail I get, the more I change my opinion on the whole issue. The protest here is in the wrong form, realize, privacy is a part of it... But freedom from "Better Service" is a part too.
They know what they sell and what they don't. They know what ads work and which don't. If they didn't have good service, thier SALES would reflect it, and they sure know how to read those numbers. DO NOT FALL INTO THE TRAP. No matter how well intended, how safe guarded, how secure they say the data will be, someday, some how, someone from marketing will get thier grubby little hands on the data and exploit it for all it's worth.
Being an AAAS member, I would like to see them put that "S" back in the lead into this story;-)
Anyhow, AAAS publishes Science, one of the long time standing top scientific journals, which has on occasion published bad science. While 90% to 99% of the submissions are top notch, bleading edge, Science is not definitive (Check the frequently quoted thing on global warming Rush L. loves to quote, but was later retracted). And Science has been pushing a lot of internet stuff lately, and my honest opinion is none of it is the quality of research that they publish on biology or environmental issues or other "true" sciences.
Sorry, I don't intend this to be a flame, but is the internet really a "science" like physics, chemistry, biology, and the likes? I do NOT think so. Because you can apply a scientific method to study internet traffic does not make the internet itself a science. In the defence of the internet, something doesn't have to be a science to be important, not much that goes on on Wall Street, or in Washington D.C. is "science" either, but it can be studied with a scientific method.
My opinion is Science (the journal) needs to get the heck out of "internet studies" and leave it to the people who do IT full time. I think a few of the editors are just feeling a little to "empowered" with thier publishing athority and making themselfs look a bit silly now that they figured out how to take a screenshot and get it published to a wide audiance... (So, in other words, I don't care WHAT they say at the AAAS about the net. They are important to the community of science, but they are out of thier element when when it comes to IT)
Cool, thanks. I have only been using Matrox lately, and haven't looked at video hardware in a long time. But I do know someone nearby the place that owes me a favor, and have one box in desprate need of a video upgrade... Anyone know how much and what type of RAM on this specific card?
Sorry if this is common knowledge or something, but... If you have to go to Fremont, CA to get the card itself, what are the odds that XFree86 is going to support it?
True, actually this is one of the prime reasons that if they axe NT, it will hurt Alpha. But reading the post below from Craig Zeller about what Enrico Pesatori had to say, this whole discussion may be mute.
But, yes, the Microsoft C compiler shows well on NT/Alpha SPEC benchmarks. Problem is, most of the common binaries are FX!32 emulation. But, for people working with source, NT/Alpha is a decent choice. I only wish GCC was as good for Alpha.
So, for example the scientific community or number crunchers who write thier own code can benifit from NT/Alpha, but people who rely on commercial software for things like graphics, sound, video, database, etc, don't get that benifit, and NT/Alpha isn't that great a choice (unless, of course, they get NT/Alpha native commercial binaries).
I have checked freshmeat and linuxapps.com, I didn't find anything that was near the level of something like cakewalk. I can't find anything called Freetracker, if you could give me a URL that would be great.
I was wondering about the possability of building a "Digital Recording Studio" that was capable of making some reasonable quality recordings. Something that would take seperate tracks at seperate times, so you could lay down a drum beat, then come back and add in the instruments, then the vocals, etc.. I would prefer to do it in Linux or FreeBSD, and with open source software (for financial reasons), but unfortunately I think I will end up with something commercial. (I am not going to pop for a $10,000+ system and software).
I was checking out GreenBox and Studio but don't really know anything about them yet, it's just all I found for Linux, and would like to hear from some people that can speak from experiance about thier functionality, ease of use, etc... And, I wouldn't mind hearing about some hardware requirements, would it take gobs and gobs of RAM and SCSI drives and massive CPU power to do playback of a track while recording another track to sync to it?
I would really appreciate learning more about how possable this is, and how expnsive it might be... Maybe an old 4-track unit that allows you to do this with normal cassette tapes would be something to consider for me to play around with, but it would really be a lot more fun if I could get digital quality, and have a little more precise control, and be able to do it on a computer, create MP3's etc...
Does anyone out there know of a UNIX (linux, irix, tru64, solaris, freebsd...) alternitive to CakeWalk? Video is nice, but audio alone would be something more interesting to me.
If there isn't a project to produce something like CakeWalk, would anyone be interested in trying to get CakeWalk itself ported to Linux? I for one would buy it;-)
Actually, that's good news. We were "this" close to getting a new Alpha dual here from Microway a few months back, and didn't do it because we couldn't find a good compiler. If there would have been anything that ran in Linux that would have gave the preformance we would have wanted, another Alpha would be in the building I work in;-)
But, the only thing we found was for Tru64, so the "chiefs" decided to get some more SGI's, and keep the commercial UNIX problems all with one company.:-( I do know for a fact though, that if the preformance (espically FP w/ Fortran) would have been there from a commercial Linux compiler, not only would there be a Alpha Linux box here, but a couple PIII's running Linux too. For pure hardware preformance, there would have been a lot of nice hardware we could have got for the price of the Origin and Octane we got insted.
In the end, brand loyalty won, because it came down to a risk on something unknown, with questionable preformance from unknow compilers, compared to knowing how SGI would screw us already. As for Linux developed with a commercial compiler I say YES! I have long been a believer that people who don't optimize thier compiles, but go out and spend $700 more for a CPU that runs 20% faster are total idiots! It depends much on if the distribution was put together with the compiler, or if the compiler is included, and the price tag. Actually, I have thought about this for over a year now, and I think it was last summer some time I came to this conclusion: "If someone is selling a C compiler for Linux, and they claim it is better than GCC, why in the world don't they bundle it with a whole Linux distribution that was compiled with thier compiler?" If in fact the preformance was better, you may well be able to spend say $100 to $300 on a commercial compiler, and get a system that was 35% faster overall. I mean, even GCC can make your system up to 30% faster if you use the right flags (see my tests and the claims of Mandrake Linux). People are always looking for the latest greatest hardware boosts for an edge, and it's very short sighted to think about spending all that money on faster hardware when you have the source code right in front of you, and your runing unoptimized binaries.
If Intel REALLY wanted to support Linux, they would port thier compiler to Linux (which is an OUTSTANDING C compiler for x86), and let VAResearch sell Red Hat recompiled optimized for each specific CPU using Intel's compiler. They would probably see a preformance boost that they can't get out of hardware alone.
Along those lines, I also believe that AMD should really start backing the GCC project by donating half a dozen of thier new Athlon processors to the top developers in GCC. If they did that, and shiped instruction set specs and details, there could be a -march=athlon flag that could potential put thier preformance WAY ahead of PIII.
I'm also hoping that IBM pays some close attention to GCC now that they are supporting the Linux community, with the G3 and the older Cyrix based stuff they still own, they could really make Linux on thier hardware "wake people up."
Don't get me wrong, I think GCC is doing pretty darn well. But I do think that GCC development and support is much more important than elevating Linus to the level of a god.
Yea, I think he works directly as a Linux International promoter... But I bet he still has contacts;-) and I can't think of anyone else who could get a couple 21264's to the gcc guys, can you? If so, feel free to beg em;-) couldn't hurt.
Do people really buy $5000 x86 machines because they run more than one OS?
That's not exactly what I meant about Intel Hardware. What I meant was they can run NT if they are use to Windows, and get full system preformance expectations from the hardware with NT. They can run Linux or FreeBSD, and get the preformance they expect.
With Alpha, you can only get the preformance you would expect from an alpha if you run Tru64. If you run Linux, or NT, or anything else, your preformance will not be all that it could be.
Slashdot Mirror
But, GCC is no where near as good a compiler is MIPS Pro 7.3 for thier hardware.
The older SGI's we have here without IRIX updated run fine, 100% stable (including a Personal Iris, still going strong). Indy's got a little funny when we went 5.x to 6.x, but are OK now. Indigo is fine. Octane (one of the newest we have) is doing so-so, no problems yet. Origin 200 has been a nightmear. So, it's hit and miss. If you want relyable, I guess you need to look at the older ones, and older versions of IRIX... I think I agree there is a trend that SGI's hardware and software quality is going downhill.
But I am not sure I would go as far as as the poster did.... Well, maybe, but it's hard not to like SGI, like your first true love or something. I guess I don't think at this point I would choose to buy one personally if I were out shopping for something in thier price range for my own, but once upon a time, I would have LOVED to own one.
IRIX is a rock-solid OS, and I cannot imagine using Linux on a production workstation at this point.
I have used IRIX since 1993. I have used Linux since 1997. In January of 1998, I might have agreed. As for the whole calander year of 1999, I have spent about 85% more time using Linux, and about 4% of my time using IRIX (and about 0.1% using DEC-UNIX), and about 10% of my time using FreeBSD. Of the time I spend trying to track bugs, and figure out where errors are comeing from, it's about 50/50 IRIX/Linux. Considering how little I use IRIX, that's probably more time tracking bugs than actual use.
To tell the truth, I now 4 people here who use IRIX as thier primary workstation OS, and they would opt out if they had a choice. Conclusing, I think today in 1999, I would completely dissagree with the statement "IRIX is a rock-solid OS, and I cannot imagine using Linux on a production workstation at this point."
We have had this problem too, I think I might be able to pull up a log by this afternoon to post if you want to see it. Haven't fixed it yet :-( anyone that knows a solution, PLEASE let me know. I know we lost overnight numbercrunching data at least twice.
Then Red Hat _might_ make a move to make people qualify thier products as "unoffical Red Hat" which is clearly distinguishing them from the rest of Linux.
Now, after Red Hat makes an effort to make it clear to even clueless newbies that they are mearly _one_ of the distributions of Linux, and that "Offical Red Hat" is diffrent from "Unoffical Red Hat," people are whining again.
I'm starting to think the SlashDot/Linux community just won't be happy with _anything_ Red Hat does now.
This is a great move for them, and for Debian, and for Slackware. They are doing thier best to make it clear that they are a _distribution_ of linux, and that doesn't meant that Linux = Red Hat. They are makeing it clear that "we will allow you to copy and redistribute, to a point, but don't do something that will make users expect to get tech support from us if they buy a copied version from you."
Seems like some of you are reacting to this like you expect Red Hat to provide phone support to every user in the Universe. Worse yet, some are actually starting to say that they shouldn't have the right to regulate the use of thier name. If you say Red Hat can't regulate the use of thier product name, how would you like it if they turned the tables on you, and said the same about the use of the word "Linux" itself, and said "Red Hat _IS_ Linux" ... you wouldn't have a leg to stand on if you told them how they can and can't use thier own name.
Lighten up, this is an issue of a series of schmucks selling $2 CD's in online auctions trying to get $70+ (More than the price of the offical version), and leaving clueless bidders believeing they will get support (which they won't). Red Hat is not only protecting itself, they are protecting Linux by keeping people from getting angry and disappointed during thier first experiance with Linux.
Gotta admit, there is no basis for this guess, but what basis do you have for Amiga using a Transmeta Super CPU, and becoming the ultimate graphic workstation of the year 2000? People seem to believe that with no evidence, why not just accept they are doing nothing exciting at all?
I don't know who works for Cisco, or what thier like. But, it would take a lot more than this rubbish to make me believe something was wrong.
Simply sounds like the rantings of a lunitic. Anyone know what the heck this guy is talking about? If there is a point in there, I would like to know what it is.
Heh... to respond... It's called "armchair quarterbacking." Sort of an American past-time. Yea, it's lame, yea, it's silly, but... it can be fun too.
Almost like Anonymous Coward in this case could be Bob Young himself... or better, Bill Gates. Soo true, eveyone has an opinion, I'm just making myself a little more visable so it's clearer to all how far I can really shove my foot in my mouth ;-)
I've been in school WAY too long... It's about time for me to get out of the chair, and shut the hell up, and start doing something myself.
Really? IPO brought in $$ that are numbers I am not use to counting up to, sure haven't seen than many 000's in a long time. Uh, Considering thier "worth" and the cost of paying someone to develop say, KOffice full time, it's not a big expendature. KOffice will be developed with or without Red Hat. If they negociate a salary or contract with the people who are already developeing it so they could do it full time, I doubt it would make a big dent in thier budget. If they try to do it "in house" it would be stupid, they need to just support the people who already are use to doing it for free.
open up the RPM standard
Did I imply they were closed? I have looked inside them, I know there not. I know RPMs can do a whole lot more than Red Hat does with them on a regular basis. ;-) And, RPM is not that difficult to work with, I've rolled a few, never found it that hard. Matter of fact, when you really look into the specs for them, you can see that there is enough in there that most people can benifit from them, and .src.rpm (find your rpmrc, change your flags, feel the speed...). Dependancacy headaches might need a tweak of the format (but frequent releases of CD sets would make up for it on the short term end).
Compaq *AND* Dell already HAVE partnerships with RedHat.
Again, fully aware of that. But I don't think that I would agree the partnerships are being as exploited as they should be. When I see more than "oh, we ship a couple products with Red Hat, what's a kernel optimization?" maybe I will think it's actually making a differance like it should.
Nice to see you get soo excited though. Too bad I have to write most of you comments off, you seem a little to pre-occupied with degrading the distribution to be taken seriously about how to get them to be a successfull buisness. To be expected I suppose, not everyone wants to see Red Hat succeed.... Lots of people want to see it fail.
Can't wait till RedCrap switches to AIX-style licensing. "A two-user RedHat 7.0 license is now $80. A four-user license is now $200..."
Heh, yea, great idea, and let the #1 selling open source project shoot it self in the foot, loose it's GPL community support, and follow the buisness plans of the 1970's in the comming century... There's a model for growth. Well, growth of some grass over the grave of the company anyhow, because it will be a nice peacefull resting place with few visitors.
Red Hat is NOT, Not, not, not, your traditional UNIX. Red Hat is tetering on mass market apeal. Red Hat needs to make things efficent like no ones buisness, and yes, that means "Give you a reliable product at a fair price?!". If they don't, thier ethics will be in question BIG time, and people WILL be able to call them "the next Microsoft" and get away with it. (Yet another reason to break the molds of traditional software houses, and start using a buisness model that is more closely suited to open source, that being a "publishing house" model). 75 cents a copy for the local paper, my gosh, there is no way these people can be making money... ;-P Yea, RIGHT...
Next time, research before writing.
Why do I respond to trolls... ;-) Your right, I should do some research, it is my job after all, but it involves VOC extraction, HSGC, and Henrys Law... Aparently you have mistaken me for a journalist, or someone who gives a crap about what holes there are in the story. Soo sorry I didn't hand hold you and tell you in detail where all the holes in GCC w/ Alpha are, and why Dell and Compaq partenerships are weak, and what Red Hat's financial resources are to be spent on growth, and why SuSE is happy with RPMs but developers aren't because of compatibility issues, and how development dollars can be used wisely vs. squandered, and why making news by making market moves makes sence in the trifold aspect of getting good press-gaining community support-filling thier current product lackings. I guess I assumed that most intellegent readers would already know these things, and be able to fill in the gaps rather than read a 20 page essay with footnotes.
Actually, as fun as it is to sit here and debait, I gotta cut it off here, seeing as how I highly doubt that it'll make a differance.
BTW, no offence taken, least I got someone off thier butt and got them to think about if Open Source is viable at all in the marketplace, even if they don't want to think about it.
Wait, stores carry magizines, and news papers, why wouldn't they want a product that a subscription. Say, $30 a copy insted of $100 for a four copy subscription.
If anything, I think stores would be MORE likely to carry it, because they know the shelf life dates. They wouldn't have the fear that it will sit forever, they could only order a few copies at a time, and less right before they know a new issue will come out.
My school bookstore for one has stocked boxed copies of Red Hat right before the upgrade from 5.0 to 5.1, right before 5.1 to 5.2, and right before 6.0 too. I KNOW first hand they are pissed off because they are always a step behind, and Red Hat already releases faster than other software on the shelf and its an unpredictiable schedule. They don't mind other software as much, but Red Hat has made them look stupid.
On the other hand, even the grocery store carries magizines and other periodicals, because they know if they don't sell, next month they will buy less copies, and the shelf life is known.
So, I guess I don't agree witht that.
Then I'd like to see VA Research IPO, be a HUGE success, then buyout SGI and Caldera. Now, that would be a Linux market. VA could bolster Caldera enough to make it more head to head with Red Hat, and SGI would fit in thier product line pretty well, giving them MIPS to add to the Intel line.
Then all the "extra" vendors out there could fill in the gaps with AMD systems. Like... Penguin Computing and Mandrake... Yea... Hey.. let's pair everyone up...
$950 for 5 Incident Support Package through Red Hat, $35,000 for thier Silver Support Package, not exactly the greatest bargins, Red Hat needs to come up with a stream line mass market support system.
SGI is loosing ground, and support is one of thier lackings. SGI using Red Hat was thier solution, and it's not working as you can tell from the $16 to $11 drop. SGI's MIPS products are solid on the hardware side, but just troll the SGI newsgroups, and you will find users are very unhappy with IRIX. It's not that UNIX in general is giving them problems, but SGI's problems with IRIX, various bugs, chaos in patches and updates, nightmear upgrade stories, etc.
Buying SGI would only give Red Hat another Support headache, just when they really need to get thier support more streamline, and focus it on a mass market. It would be a move in the wrong direction.
Now, someone like Compaq or Dell on the other hand would be an excellent place to form a "partnership" on a long term scale. Red Hat needs to get in tight with one of the Intel based hardware vendors that can help them scale up to 2+ CPU servers with RAID on one hand, and looking down towards laptops and PDAs on the other hand. Those are some areas where the growth would be a little less painful. And a "partnership" rather than a "buyout" would allow them to gain some "help" and not "aquire the headache."
If SGI is to get back on it's feet, it needs to do it on it's own. It's not thier hardware that is lacking, it's thier management. The few good techs never seen to see the light of day, or leave for other companies. The bad techs answer the phones and go to trade shows. Bad marketing, bad service, bad customer relations, and overpriced service/support contracts for a product that ends up a major headache for many consumers is going to keep driving them even lower than $11. Keep waiting for them to "bottom out" and get bought by someone like Compaq or Dell, who have proved they CAN handle the hardware buisness in todays market.
A huge number of peopl would not want their "Silver Support" subscription with a $35,000 price tag!!
I am talking about CDROM.COM style subscriptions, to the MEDIA, not the support. Red Hat could easily use it's financial resources to put out a quarterly distribution that included all the latest and greatest applications and information on a CD for under $100 a year (which would still be outrageously high priced for a total of maybe 8 CD's a year, which would probably cost them $1-2 per CD to produce).
They should be maintaining a solid base of applications anyhow for thier product, and batch runs on a CD burner that would crank out some disks to drop in the mail with a little "product brocher" or something would make good marketing sense for them (because it would provide them with the information they need to know about who might be willing to pay for at least the media, Plus, give them a direct way to let thier users know what new products and services like support contracts were avaliable).
If AOL and Microsoft can send out Free CD's to people a few times a year without cost to get people to just consider using thier browser or internet service, I would sure think Red Hat could use a mechinism like this to keep in contact with thier "bulk" customers, and provide a valuable service at a reasonable price.
Using thier money to "Aquire" more property is not the way of Red Hat. That is just plain stupid, and, only ONE of the suggestions in the article.
I call you attention to item number 5, intitled "Tools." Ahhhh... People use applications, not OS's... Hmmm...
Red Hat has money, now, if they want to keep the support of the Open Source Community they need to:
To apply pure logic, one would think that low income areas would be the places where families needed to cook economical meals, and spend less in restraunts and convenient stores (meaning 24 hour a day corner stores with prices 3x what grocery stores charge). So, you might try to take a logical leap, and say "There are probably less convenient stores and restraunts in low income areas." BBBBBBzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Wrong answer.
7-11 and McDonalds have known for a long long long time that low income areas are good markets for them to expand into.
While we would all like to sit here "High And Mighty" saying how wonderful internet access is, and how people of a certian income or color need to have it, that's not how the world works.
If they want it, they will get it. Before you say they can't, check if they have cable, and how often they dine in a restraunt. Then look at the $9.95/month internet service ads and $399 computer that are on about every third page of thier local newspapers. Do you truely believe that there are people out there who choose to have internet, but can't get it (but somehow can have cable TV, eat in Burger King or McDonalds daily, have a $800 car stereo, etc...).
Now, I am not saying that people of a ethnic background, or people of an income level all have made a choice to be that way. Not at all. I just think it's a little short sighted to say it's color or income that prevents people from getting on the internet. As for evidence, I think McDonalds and 7-11 have pretty well defined where they can make a profit, why not deal with a basic need like food first?
Why would the internet be any diffrent than dining habits, cable TV, or anything else? I guess maybe I am not seeing this as a color thing, because the only clear thing I can see about the internet is income levels, maybe. But I would agree that the internet isn't for everyone, just like everything else.
Not everyone watches CNN, not everyone reads the Wall Street Journal, not everyone goes to college... Making the government pay for access so that everyone could isn't going to mean everyone will, and that everyone will benifit from it. All it will mean is that you gave the government more control over a part of your life, and another reason to justify taking more money for "taxes" out of your paycheck.
(BTW, I believe in the LP which is my primary reason to object to seeing making another government run program a bad thing, nothing to do with race, color, money, any of that.. We don't live in a free country anymore at all, if you think so, you have confused freedom with democracy. Democracy is just orginized mob rule, which can be as bad or worse as tyrany. What if tomarrow the majority desides that we should all drive Mini-Vans? Because "the people vote for it" or "it will make life safer and more consistant" doesn't mean it has anything to do with freedom. And yes, there isn't a country in the world I would rather be in, I like it here, I just think we're slipping a little bit into "we should be like the EU" Freedom does mean not opressing people of any race, religion, sex, or income. Socialism is a diffrent belief, which intends to insure that everyone be given similar goods and treatment, and calling that fair. Freedom allow one to benifit from thier own hard work, if you want to free the oppressed, give them the chances just like everyone else. If you want socialism, thier are plenty of other countries to choose from.)
I'll tell you what I have noticed. I just got back from a 4 day trip out of town, got home, and found 84 messages in my email Inbox. 3 from cron, 4 from people I know. Well over 70 of the messages were spam.
Any time anyone wants personal information about you, beware. It's not that they will see your every move. It's not that they will know what you eat and change your health insurance rates. It's not that they are going to tell your mom where you were last Friday night. What they will do is _eventually_ sell the information.
Information is a commodity, and if they tell you they want it to provide you better service, tell them your happy with the service you get now. "Better Service" is a nice way to say "Targeted Direct Marketing." And for the slow witted, "Targeted Direct Marketing" is sales calls when your eating dinner, 70+ spam mails to sort through when your trying to see what your boss said happened at work when your out of town, and a dozens of dead trees sliced up to make coupons to fill your mail box.
I will choose not to buy from ANYONE who collects such data if I am aware of it. Not because I think they will end up "peeping" or "reporting on me to an athority." I don't think I have anything to hide, but the more junk mail I get, the more I change my opinion on the whole issue. The protest here is in the wrong form, realize, privacy is a part of it... But freedom from "Better Service" is a part too.
They know what they sell and what they don't. They know what ads work and which don't. If they didn't have good service, thier SALES would reflect it, and they sure know how to read those numbers. DO NOT FALL INTO THE TRAP. No matter how well intended, how safe guarded, how secure they say the data will be, someday, some how, someone from marketing will get thier grubby little hands on the data and exploit it for all it's worth.
Anyhow, AAAS publishes Science, one of the long time standing top scientific journals, which has on occasion published bad science. While 90% to 99% of the submissions are top notch, bleading edge, Science is not definitive (Check the frequently quoted thing on global warming Rush L. loves to quote, but was later retracted). And Science has been pushing a lot of internet stuff lately, and my honest opinion is none of it is the quality of research that they publish on biology or environmental issues or other "true" sciences.
Sorry, I don't intend this to be a flame, but is the internet really a "science" like physics, chemistry, biology, and the likes? I do NOT think so. Because you can apply a scientific method to study internet traffic does not make the internet itself a science. In the defence of the internet, something doesn't have to be a science to be important, not much that goes on on Wall Street, or in Washington D.C. is "science" either, but it can be studied with a scientific method.
My opinion is Science (the journal) needs to get the heck out of "internet studies" and leave it to the people who do IT full time. I think a few of the editors are just feeling a little to "empowered" with thier publishing athority and making themselfs look a bit silly now that they figured out how to take a screenshot and get it published to a wide audiance... (So, in other words, I don't care WHAT they say at the AAAS about the net. They are important to the community of science, but they are out of thier element when when it comes to IT)
Cool, thanks. I have only been using Matrox lately, and haven't looked at video hardware in a long time. But I do know someone nearby the place that owes me a favor, and have one box in desprate need of a video upgrade... Anyone know how much and what type of RAM on this specific card?
Sorry if this is common knowledge or something, but... If you have to go to Fremont, CA to get the card itself, what are the odds that XFree86 is going to support it?
But, yes, the Microsoft C compiler shows well on NT/Alpha SPEC benchmarks. Problem is, most of the common binaries are FX!32 emulation. But, for people working with source, NT/Alpha is a decent choice. I only wish GCC was as good for Alpha.
So, for example the scientific community or number crunchers who write thier own code can benifit from NT/Alpha, but people who rely on commercial software for things like graphics, sound, video, database, etc, don't get that benifit, and NT/Alpha isn't that great a choice (unless, of course, they get NT/Alpha native commercial binaries).
I was wondering about the possability of building a "Digital Recording Studio" that was capable of making some reasonable quality recordings. Something that would take seperate tracks at seperate times, so you could lay down a drum beat, then come back and add in the instruments, then the vocals, etc.. I would prefer to do it in Linux or FreeBSD, and with open source software (for financial reasons), but unfortunately I think I will end up with something commercial. (I am not going to pop for a $10,000+ system and software).
I was checking out GreenBox and Studio but don't really know anything about them yet, it's just all I found for Linux, and would like to hear from some people that can speak from experiance about thier functionality, ease of use, etc... And, I wouldn't mind hearing about some hardware requirements, would it take gobs and gobs of RAM and SCSI drives and massive CPU power to do playback of a track while recording another track to sync to it?
I would really appreciate learning more about how possable this is, and how expnsive it might be... Maybe an old 4-track unit that allows you to do this with normal cassette tapes would be something to consider for me to play around with, but it would really be a lot more fun if I could get digital quality, and have a little more precise control, and be able to do it on a computer, create MP3's etc...
If there isn't a project to produce something like CakeWalk, would anyone be interested in trying to get CakeWalk itself ported to Linux? I for one would buy it ;-)
But, the only thing we found was for Tru64, so the "chiefs" decided to get some more SGI's, and keep the commercial UNIX problems all with one company. :-( I do know for a fact though, that if the preformance (espically FP w/ Fortran) would have been there from a commercial Linux compiler, not only would there be a Alpha Linux box here, but a couple PIII's running Linux too. For pure hardware preformance, there would have been a lot of nice hardware we could have got for the price of the Origin and Octane we got insted.
In the end, brand loyalty won, because it came down to a risk on something unknown, with questionable preformance from unknow compilers, compared to knowing how SGI would screw us already. As for Linux developed with a commercial compiler I say YES! I have long been a believer that people who don't optimize thier compiles, but go out and spend $700 more for a CPU that runs 20% faster are total idiots! It depends much on if the distribution was put together with the compiler, or if the compiler is included, and the price tag. Actually, I have thought about this for over a year now, and I think it was last summer some time I came to this conclusion:
"If someone is selling a C compiler for Linux, and they claim it is better than GCC, why in the world don't they bundle it with a whole Linux distribution that was compiled with thier compiler?"
If in fact the preformance was better, you may well be able to spend say $100 to $300 on a commercial compiler, and get a system that was 35% faster overall. I mean, even GCC can make your system up to 30% faster if you use the right flags (see my tests and the claims of Mandrake Linux). People are always looking for the latest greatest hardware boosts for an edge, and it's very short sighted to think about spending all that money on faster hardware when you have the source code right in front of you, and your runing unoptimized binaries.
If Intel REALLY wanted to support Linux, they would port thier compiler to Linux (which is an OUTSTANDING C compiler for x86), and let VAResearch sell Red Hat recompiled optimized for each specific CPU using Intel's compiler. They would probably see a preformance boost that they can't get out of hardware alone.
Along those lines, I also believe that AMD should really start backing the GCC project by donating half a dozen of thier new Athlon processors to the top developers in GCC. If they did that, and shiped instruction set specs and details, there could be a -march=athlon flag that could potential put thier preformance WAY ahead of PIII.
I'm also hoping that IBM pays some close attention to GCC now that they are supporting the Linux community, with the G3 and the older Cyrix based stuff they still own, they could really make Linux on thier hardware "wake people up."
Don't get me wrong, I think GCC is doing pretty darn well. But I do think that GCC development and support is much more important than elevating Linus to the level of a god.
Yea, I think he works directly as a Linux International promoter... But I bet he still has contacts ;-) and I can't think of anyone else who could get a couple 21264's to the gcc guys, can you? If so, feel free to beg em ;-) couldn't hurt.
Do people really buy $5000 x86 machines because they run more than one OS?
That's not exactly what I meant about Intel Hardware. What I meant was they can run NT if they are use to Windows, and get full system preformance expectations from the hardware with NT. They can run Linux or FreeBSD, and get the preformance they expect.
With Alpha, you can only get the preformance you would expect from an alpha if you run Tru64. If you run Linux, or NT, or anything else, your preformance will not be all that it could be.