These days the video card is the bottleneck, not the CPU. Get GeForce (IMHO the only 3d card worth getting) and you'll see *huge* improvement in speed, even with the same CPU. Of course there is no P6 board that has AGP slot...
But in any case, the video card is the limiting factor, not the CPU. And now that GeForce and a few other cards include the geometry engine which takes *all* graphics-related work away from the CPU and lets it do other things (like AI), even a P6-200 would work just as well. Then again, too bad no P6-200 board has AGP slot...
To moderators: please moderate the above post up. This guy knows what he's talking about.
And I just want to add one more thing. To all those whoe are saying bus speed is the bottleneck: did you actually run the benchmarks to compare the speeds? Where did you get this idea from? Perhaps you just assume higher bus speed will necessarily speed up the computer immensely.
Well, there have been many benchmarks that show quite the opposite. The CPU is *not* limited by the bus speed. Even the 66MHz bus is more then enough to supply all the memory bandwidth the CPU needs. And that is why Celeron, with its 66MHz bus runs just as fast as "true Pentium 3" with its 100MHz bus.
Statements like "processor speeds above 400MHz don't make that drastic difference" are made by really clueless people. Reality check: take a look at the actual benchmarks. Even when running 3d games like Q3, memory bandwidth is *not* a bottleneck. L2 cache compensates for slow RAM quite nicely.
Of course, on the other hand, you don't need a 1.1GHz CPU to run a word processor/browse the interent. Well, not yet anyway (right, Bill?:-)
My roommate had a mini-disk player. As far as I can tell it's nothing more but a toy.
There is no way to copy a mp3 on a mini-disc, or encode a CD on it. You have to record the music on it by playing it through another device. This is *analog* recording, which degrades the quality severely. On the other hand, when you encode mp3s you rip the digital image of the track -- and that makes a huge difference.
Not to mention that mini-discs use Sony's proprietary format for storing music which Sony will not release the specs for.
I am not defending mp3 players though. In my opinion they also suck. In 64MB of memory you can fit about an hour of music. And since it's not stored in a removable media you're stuck until you delete them and copy some new mp3s there.
A portable player *must* have removable media. When oh when will these moronic companies pull their heads out of their asses and release something useful. I've been waiting for 2 years for a CD/mp3 player combo. Apparently some small companies did release it but the availability is scarse to say the least.
ok, I can get the idea that everything is getting smaller, we'll have cpu's made of a few atoms and 100 terabyte hd's size of a penny, yada, yada, yada, but:
what about big monitors? I was just thinking of replacing my old 15" with a 19". Also, while we are at it, what about keyboards and mice? Sorry people, but the pen thingy in Palm Pilots is not exactly a very conveniet input device.
(see the subject) And so do many other people. Now, I don't use it as my workstation -- it is primarily an IP masq gateway for LAN, and also a small-scale www/ftp/mail/samba server, running Debian. The hadrware is AMD 486dx4-100, 32MB RAM, 1.2 Gig HD. It does the job very nicely. In fact it is actually over-powered for what it does. I am not about to get rid of it as it is still a very nice machine.
Admittedly, my workstation is AMD k6/2-300 and I am running Mandrake on it which does appear to be noticeably faster then any other distro I tried. Although most of the performance gain comes from GUI stuff which is quite bloated (*ghm* KDE) -- pentium optimizations sure make a difference there. The majority of the daemons though are rather light weight so the pentium optimization would not make that much of a difference.
So, what I'm saying is that pentium optimizations are indeed very nice, but 1) you cannot just obsolete 486 and 386 -- they are still being used and they might even live for the next 10 years in embedded devices -- who knows?
2) I don't believe the difference in performance of the majority of the daemons would be anywhere near as dramatic as that of KDE. And besides, when it comes to servers you want to make 100% sure they are reliable. 99% is not good enough (ok, now I'm being paranoid, but hey -- only the paranoid survive;-)
Every time I hear that Dell is selling anything with Linux preinstalled I can't help but point out that you are still paying the Microsoft tax. Dell's computers with Linux pre-installed cost at least as much, if not more, then the ones with Windows. Besides, all the Dell's ads I've seen are hyping Windows. They do not actively promote Linux. They just have it somewhere on their web site. No, Dell will never change. They will forever be Intel's and Micro$oft's bitch. Better buy stuff from a company that truely supports Linux. ___
Next time think before you spit out this utter nonsense. Read the documentation again and mae sure you *understand* it. It says root can do rm -rf/* on a chroot'ed file system, and NOT the root file system of your drive.
The GPL seems pretty ill-equipped to deal with this type of code 'piracy'. (I think the whole Sun-Blackdown situation pretty much showed that.)
Get a clue! The JDK that Blackdown is working on is NOT licensed under GPL. It is licensed under Sun's license which basically means Sun can do anything it wants.
I have AMD K6/2-300. Not exactly the fastest machine. When xmms starts playing a song the CPU load is at 12-14%. Then, after a few seconds, it goes down to well below 1%. Often you can't even see xmms in top. Perhaps you are trying to run it on a 486? ___
What do you have under your account? That's right. Your data, which is far more valuable.
Uhhm, have you ever heard of backup, my friend? Every company that has any clue makes a tape backup of user's data every night. So the fact that a "virus" can destroy you data has exactly zero effect when you can easily restore it from a tape.
And it's not just about viruses. Backup is the ultimate answer to accidental deletion, unwanted modifications and (gasp!) hardware failure. And if you don't make back up -- well, then you deserve to have your data destroyed. Perhaps after this happens once you'll learn -- but you never know.
He also said they dropped Alpha before Intel's investment. I am pretty sure this is incorrect. I believe I saw Alpha systems on their web site for a little while after Intel's investment. But don't take my word for it -- it was a long time ago and I don't claim to have perfect memory.
I would like to hear what he has to say about AMD though. And it's not just Athlon. Penguin Computing offers K6's in their low-end systems. Why not VA?
Sorry for the stupid question, but how does the stuff SGI released relate to XFree 4 and Mesa? Also, could somebody please explain how the accelerated 3d graphics will work in Linux? (as in the architecture) ___
I am, just like most people in the Open Source community, outraged by what happened. There has to be something we can do to help. Jon Johansen & his dad could sure use some. We must show the suits they are NOT above the law just because they have money.
My question is, what would be the most effective thing to do? We must act quickly or else it will be too late! (and no, ranting on/. does not count). ___
The linuxnewbie.org's web page has the ? problem. All the single quotes appear as question marks. This happens if the web page was edited using any Micro$oft software, because M$ once again decided to bastardize the standard (unicode in this case).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but linuxnewbie.org is supposed to be a Linux web site. If so, one would hope they'd actually use Linux!
They are correct. Apple does not share any hardware information. They want Mac OS to be the only OS that runs on it. The difference between Linux distributions and BeOS is that
1) Linux is Free Software, BeOS is proprietary. If the BeOS guys decided to take code from Linux, they'd have to release code for BeOS, which is something they don't want to do.
2) Linux has lots of supporters and maintainers who are willing to spend time figuring out how the Apple hardware works. BeOS is a company and hence does not have nearly the same amount of resources. ___
The quality of many of Corel's products is even worse then Microsoft's equivalents. Right now Corel has 2 Linux products: WordPerfect 8 and Corel Linux. Both suck. WP8 is simply unusable. (Just compare it to the Windows version of WP8 and tell me if I'm wrong). And Corel Linux is a poor excuse for a distribution. It was released in a rush just in time for Comdex, even though it has nothing to offer except a few fancy graphics and lots of bugs. (Is Corel seriously trying to sell it?) ___
Can somebody please explain what's involved in the ftp install? I downloaded the rescue and root disks, hoping that will work but it didn't. I got to the point where it asks where to install the system from. I select netfetch but it fails. It didn't even ask me for the NIC driver yet! What am I missing?
In fact, I've been using the 2.2.x kernels with Debian 2.1 (Slink) since May. (Which is when I first installed Slink). Works fine.
Note that kernel 2.2 was a huge change compared to 2.0. On the other hand, 2.4 is more like an incremental release (don't forget that 2.2 was released only a year ago). So Potato and the Penguin should live happily together;-)
Last I checked RedHat was free and they charged for support. So where is the news? Maybe it's just some marketing or something. But the noise level on/. is rising.
Slashdot Mirror
These days the video card is the bottleneck, not the CPU. Get GeForce (IMHO the only 3d card worth getting) and you'll see *huge* improvement in speed, even with the same CPU. Of course there is no P6 board that has AGP slot...
But in any case, the video card is the limiting factor, not the CPU. And now that GeForce and a few other cards include the geometry engine which takes *all* graphics-related work away from the CPU and lets it do other things (like AI), even a P6-200 would work just as well. Then again, too bad no P6-200 board has AGP slot...
___
To moderators: please moderate the above post up. This guy knows what he's talking about.
:-)
And I just want to add one more thing. To all those whoe are saying bus speed is the bottleneck: did you actually run the benchmarks to compare the speeds? Where did you get this idea from? Perhaps you just assume higher bus speed will necessarily speed up the computer immensely.
Well, there have been many benchmarks that show quite the opposite. The CPU is *not* limited by the bus speed. Even the 66MHz bus is more then enough to supply all the memory bandwidth the CPU needs. And that is why Celeron, with its 66MHz bus runs just as fast as "true Pentium 3" with its 100MHz bus.
Statements like "processor speeds above 400MHz don't make that drastic difference" are made by really clueless people. Reality check: take a look at the actual benchmarks. Even when running 3d games like Q3, memory bandwidth is *not* a bottleneck. L2 cache compensates for slow RAM quite nicely.
Of course, on the other hand, you don't need a 1.1GHz CPU to run a word processor/browse the interent. Well, not yet anyway (right, Bill?
___
Well, not quite. Mandrake has always been a "Better RedHat then RedHat". By that I mean less bugs and more features (like KDE out-of-the-box).
___
My roommate had a mini-disk player. As far as I can tell it's nothing more but a toy.
There is no way to copy a mp3 on a mini-disc, or encode a CD on it. You have to record the music on it by playing it through another device. This is *analog* recording, which degrades the quality severely. On the other hand, when you encode mp3s you rip the digital image of the track -- and that makes a huge difference.
Not to mention that mini-discs use Sony's proprietary format for storing music which Sony will not release the specs for.
I am not defending mp3 players though. In my opinion they also suck. In 64MB of memory you can fit about an hour of music. And since it's not stored in a removable media you're stuck until you delete them and copy some new mp3s there.
A portable player *must* have removable media. When oh when will these moronic companies pull their heads out of their asses and release something useful. I've been waiting for 2 years for a CD/mp3 player combo. Apparently some small companies did release it but the availability is scarse to say the least.
___
What I want:
A CD player that can also play mp3s off of a standard ISO CD and without bullshit like SDMI.
___
they do. if you hit them with a hammer.
I wonder though what exactly the "non-skip technology" is. The damn player has no moving parts.
___
ok, I can get the idea that everything is getting smaller, we'll have cpu's made of a few atoms and 100 terabyte hd's size of a penny, yada, yada, yada, but:
what about big monitors? I was just thinking of replacing my old 15" with a 19". Also, while we are at it, what about keyboards and mice? Sorry people, but the pen thingy in Palm Pilots is not exactly a very conveniet input device.
___
(see the subject)
;-)
And so do many other people. Now, I don't use it as my workstation -- it is primarily an IP masq gateway for LAN, and also a small-scale www/ftp/mail/samba server, running Debian. The hadrware is AMD 486dx4-100, 32MB RAM, 1.2 Gig HD. It does the job very nicely. In fact it is actually over-powered for what it does. I am not about to get rid of it as it is still a very nice machine.
Admittedly, my workstation is AMD k6/2-300 and I am running Mandrake on it which does appear to be noticeably faster then any other distro I tried. Although most of the performance gain comes from GUI stuff which is quite bloated (*ghm* KDE) -- pentium optimizations sure make a difference there. The majority of the daemons though are rather light weight so the pentium optimization would not make that much of a difference.
So, what I'm saying is that pentium optimizations are indeed very nice, but
1) you cannot just obsolete 486 and 386 -- they are still being used and they might even live for the next 10 years in embedded devices -- who knows?
2) I don't believe the difference in performance of the majority of the daemons would be anywhere near as dramatic as that of KDE. And besides, when it comes to servers you want to make 100% sure they are reliable. 99% is not good enough (ok, now I'm being paranoid, but hey -- only the paranoid survive
___
Every time I hear that Dell is selling anything with Linux preinstalled I can't help but point out that you are still paying the Microsoft tax. Dell's computers with Linux pre-installed cost at least as much, if not more, then the ones with Windows. Besides, all the Dell's ads I've seen are hyping Windows. They do not actively promote Linux. They just have it somewhere on their web site.
No, Dell will never change. They will forever be Intel's and Micro$oft's bitch. Better buy stuff from a company that truely supports Linux.
___
Next time think before you spit out this utter nonsense. Read the documentation again and mae sure you *understand* it. It says root can do rm -rf /* on a chroot'ed file system, and NOT the root file system of your drive.
___
Get a clue! The JDK that Blackdown is working on is NOT licensed under GPL. It is licensed under Sun's license which basically means Sun can do anything it wants.
The rest of your argument is similarly bogus.
___
I have AMD K6/2-300. Not exactly the fastest machine. When xmms starts playing a song the CPU load is at 12-14%. Then, after a few seconds, it goes down to well below 1%. Often you can't even see xmms in top. Perhaps you are trying to run it on a 486?
___
Uhhm, have you ever heard of backup, my friend? Every company that has any clue makes a tape backup of user's data every night. So the fact that a "virus" can destroy you data has exactly zero effect when you can easily restore it from a tape.
And it's not just about viruses. Backup is the ultimate answer to accidental deletion, unwanted modifications and (gasp!) hardware failure. And if you don't make back up -- well, then you deserve to have your data destroyed. Perhaps after this happens once you'll learn -- but you never know.
___
He also said they dropped Alpha before Intel's investment. I am pretty sure this is incorrect. I believe I saw Alpha systems on their web site for a little while after Intel's investment. But don't take my word for it -- it was a long time ago and I don't claim to have perfect memory.
I would like to hear what he has to say about AMD though. And it's not just Athlon. Penguin Computing offers K6's in their low-end systems. Why not VA?
___
Sorry for the stupid question, but how does the stuff SGI released relate to XFree 4 and Mesa? Also, could somebody please explain how the accelerated 3d graphics will work in Linux? (as in the architecture)
___
I am, just like most people in the Open Source community, outraged by what happened. There has to be something we can do to help. Jon Johansen & his dad could sure use some. We must show the suits they are NOT above the law just because they have money.
/. does not count).
My question is, what would be the most effective thing to do? We must act quickly or else it will be too late! (and no, ranting on
___
The linuxnewbie.org's web page has the ? problem. All the single quotes appear as question marks. This happens if the web page was edited using any Micro$oft software, because M$ once again decided to bastardize the standard (unicode in this case).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but linuxnewbie.org is supposed to be a Linux web site. If so, one would hope they'd actually use Linux!
___
They are correct. Apple does not share any hardware information. They want Mac OS to be the only OS that runs on it. The difference between Linux distributions and BeOS is that
1) Linux is Free Software, BeOS is proprietary. If the BeOS guys decided to take code from Linux, they'd have to release code for BeOS, which is something they don't want to do.
2) Linux has lots of supporters and maintainers who are willing to spend time figuring out how the Apple hardware works. BeOS is a company and hence does not have nearly the same amount of resources.
___
The quality of many of Corel's products is even worse then Microsoft's equivalents. Right now Corel has 2 Linux products: WordPerfect 8 and Corel Linux. Both suck.
WP8 is simply unusable. (Just compare it to the Windows version of WP8 and tell me if I'm wrong).
And Corel Linux is a poor excuse for a distribution. It was released in a rush just in time for Comdex, even though it has nothing to offer except a few fancy graphics and lots of bugs. (Is Corel seriously trying to sell it?)
___
I guess you have not heard of ebay, amazon.com, (gasp!) IBM, etc.
___
Can somebody please explain what's involved in the ftp install? I downloaded the rescue and root disks, hoping that will work but it didn't. I got to the point where it asks where to install the system from. I select netfetch but it fails. It didn't even ask me for the NIC driver yet! What am I missing?
___
In fact, I've been using the 2.2.x kernels with Debian 2.1 (Slink) since May. (Which is when I first installed Slink). Works fine.
;-)
Note that kernel 2.2 was a huge change compared to 2.0. On the other hand, 2.4 is more like an incremental release (don't forget that 2.2 was released only a year ago). So Potato and the Penguin should live happily together
___
Last I checked RedHat was free and they charged for support. So where is the news? Maybe it's just some marketing or something. But the noise level on /. is rising.
___
Seven of Nine is a really hot chick. Steve Ballmer is a fat ugly bastard. I definitely don't want to see his picture...
___
Who's to say that the "best interest" of the baby bills would not be to keep a collusive arrangement between them?
THAT would be illegal. And it is much easier to monitor that when the Baby Bills are separate companies.
___