With all the hype surrounding this, I still think that Transmeta has a lot to do in terms of asserting itself.
I mean sure it was a great idea to hire Linus and make a big secret about everything, but because of that people are going to be VERY sceptic about everything they are doing from now on, and somehow I don't see how they can benefit from it.
Sure the PR stunt is achieved, but once people get down to the hard facts, Transmeta still has a lot to prove, and has NOT sold a single product that we know of in 5 years ! This is a big risk for a company, whichever size it is. All the best to you Transmeta, we'll be watching:)
... but the N64 doesn't feature enough RAM to do anything usefull with Linux on it.
You can compile stuff with a GCC cross-compiler with a medium effort, but adapting a whole kernel seems like a waste of time anyway, since you probably wouldn't need all the advanced features it provides such as memory protection, thread and process management, etc...
For your info, the basic N64 features 4MB of RAM, and that's being used for everything, from video memory to sound buffer, to CPU memory. The architecture is great that's for sure (thanks to sgi!), but it's a very basic device apart from that.
I don't know if it's just me, but what I really like about all these "crashing" probes is that I can hardly imagine the faces of the NASA investors when the engineers initially came to announce that all the money would be used to crash all that very expensive equipement on a planet jillion of miles away from Earth.
I sure know that I'd think they'd be on something pretty bad at first. Somehow I can't get out of my head this image of a room filled with necktie investors looking really serious and this NASA techie that just finished explaining that yes, he's not out of his mind, he's proposing to crash the thing on the surface of the planet.
I had the same problem with XFree support for my ATI Rage Pro LT chipset on my laptop, so I know what your friend had to go through.
But currently ATI is the main chipset on laptop that offers 3D acceleration. The new chipset ATI Rage Mobility is compatible with ATI Rage 128 (it's the same chip, different output hardware though).
Hopefully if ATI sticks to what it has announced (and they talk about ATI Rage Pro and ATI Rage 128 chipset support), it should also allow the laptops based on the mobility versions of the chips to work.
I know this is a little bit of hopeful thinking, but I sure hope this does happen.
When I first got my Dell Inspiron 7000 XFree didn't support the ATI Rage Pro LT chipset correctly, so I had to resort to trying out AccelX for laptops. While the performance seemed okay, I wasn't very happy with having a closed source commercial product running on my operating system. Anyway, about 1 month later XFree 3.3.5 came out that had correct support for my laptop! I was only TOO happy to get rid of the AccelX server and go back to the free world. I thought I'd be loosing performance but I didn't notice anything. And VMware started working correctly again too ! I really think it's a shame XIG had to go that way, because I thought they had a niche that was acceptable, but trying to "feed" off XFree is just pushing it too far.
Let's not forget either that Microsoft claims it's based on entirely new technology (NT) while their actual "Next-generation" kernel is based on a modified version of the BSD kernel. Worse, they took the reliability out of that by letting graphic drivers run in the kernel.
I hope this mean there's a new mandrake to come out soon. I absolutely loved the 6.1 distro, and a 6.2 with all the new RedHat stuff would be very cool.
This doesn't mean people won't fall for it. I certainly did at first:)
But some of the other stories have weird taste, such as the one about the bombings on the serbian TV that were planned to avoid diffusion of a tape of a camera in the Colorado massacre school.
It's just an impression, but it's kinda funny. After reading all the arguments pro and against Internet Explorer 5 and NS 4.51 on Windows, I couldn't help but think :
"Hmm... exactly how many windows/. users are there?"
People that have been on the Linux bandwagon for a long time know that good things take time and experimentation. Even the lynx browser wasn't written in one day after all:)
Come on people, let's focus on how to make things better rather than complaining that they aren't good. Long live Mozilla !
Well, in France, a magazine called Dream (subtitled the alternative computing magazine) routinely gives out Linux distributions (last month Redhat 5.2 Alpha + gnome 1.0, the previous month Redhat 5.2 Intel + kde 1.1) plus it has huge sections about Linux, such as News, Programming (X, GTK, Perl, C++, etc..) and so on. And the rest of the magazine ? Well, it talks about BeOS, RiscOS, AmigaOS,... Really this is the kind of magazine that needs and deserves support !
Slashdot Mirror
With all the hype surrounding this, I still think that Transmeta has a lot to do in terms of asserting itself.
:)
I mean sure it was a great idea to hire Linus and make a big secret about everything, but because of that people are going to be VERY sceptic about everything they are doing from now on, and somehow I don't see how they can benefit from it.
Sure the PR stunt is achieved, but once people get down to the hard facts, Transmeta still has a lot to prove, and has NOT sold a single product that we know of in 5 years ! This is a big risk for a company, whichever size it is. All the best to you Transmeta, we'll be watching
... but the N64 doesn't feature enough RAM to do anything usefull with Linux on it.
You can compile stuff with a GCC cross-compiler with a medium effort, but adapting a whole kernel seems like a waste of time anyway, since you probably wouldn't need all the advanced features it provides such as memory protection, thread and process management, etc...
For your info, the basic N64 features 4MB of RAM, and that's being used for everything, from video memory to sound buffer, to CPU memory. The architecture is great that's for sure (thanks to sgi!), but it's a very basic device apart from that.
All we need not is for someone to write a GPL crawler since we obviously have the file format for the database.
Anybody want to contribute one ?
I don't know if it's just me, but what I really like about all these "crashing" probes is that I can hardly imagine the faces of the NASA investors when the engineers initially came to announce that all the money would be used to crash all that very expensive equipement on a planet jillion of miles away from Earth.
:)
I sure know that I'd think they'd be on something pretty bad at first. Somehow I can't get out of my head this image of a room filled with necktie investors looking really serious and this NASA techie that just finished explaining that yes, he's not out of his mind, he's proposing to crash the thing on the surface of the planet.
Well, maybe it's just me then
I had the same problem with XFree support for my ATI Rage Pro LT chipset on my laptop, so I know what your friend had to go through.
But currently ATI is the main chipset on laptop that offers 3D acceleration. The new chipset ATI Rage Mobility is compatible with ATI Rage 128 (it's the same chip, different output hardware though).
Hopefully if ATI sticks to what it has announced (and they talk about ATI Rage Pro and ATI Rage 128 chipset support), it should also allow the laptops based on the mobility versions of the chips to work.
I know this is a little bit of hopeful thinking, but I sure hope this does happen.
This means that all the laptops using the ATI Rage Pro LT will get Linux 3D support !
That's gonna be very cool ! A linux laptop is already a cool thing but a linux laptop with 3D is just overkill !
When I first got my Dell Inspiron 7000 XFree didn't support the ATI Rage Pro LT chipset correctly, so I had to resort to trying out AccelX for laptops. While the performance seemed okay, I wasn't very happy with having a closed source commercial product running on my operating system.
Anyway, about 1 month later XFree 3.3.5 came out that had correct support for my laptop! I was only TOO happy to get rid of the AccelX server and go back to the free world. I thought I'd be loosing performance but I didn't notice anything. And VMware started working correctly again too !
I really think it's a shame XIG had to go that way, because I thought they had a niche that was acceptable, but trying to "feed" off XFree is just pushing it too far.
Go XFree !
Let's not forget either that Microsoft claims it's based on entirely new technology (NT) while their actual "Next-generation" kernel is based on a modified version of the BSD kernel. Worse, they took the reliability out of that by letting graphic drivers run in the kernel.
I hope this mean there's a new mandrake to come out soon. I absolutely loved the 6.1 distro, and a 6.2 with all the new RedHat stuff would be very cool.
Anybody in the know around here ?
This doesn't mean people won't fall for it. I certainly did at first :)
But some of the other stories have weird taste, such as the one about the bombings on the serbian TV that were planned to avoid diffusion of a tape of a camera in the Colorado massacre school.
Sometimes even black humor isn't funny...
It's just an impression, but it's kinda funny. After reading all the arguments pro and against Internet Explorer 5 and NS 4.51 on Windows, I couldn't help but think :
"Hmm... exactly how many windows
People that have been on the Linux bandwagon for a long time know that good things take time and experimentation. Even the lynx browser wasn't written in one day after all
Come on people, let's focus on how to make things better rather than complaining that they aren't good. Long live Mozilla !
Well, in France, a magazine called Dream (subtitled the alternative computing magazine) routinely gives out Linux distributions (last month Redhat 5.2 Alpha + gnome 1.0, the previous month Redhat 5.2 Intel + kde 1.1) plus it has huge sections about Linux, such as News, Programming (X, GTK, Perl, C++, etc..) and so on. And the rest of the magazine ? Well, it talks about BeOS, RiscOS, AmigaOS, ... Really this is the kind of magazine that needs and deserves support !