No, I don't think you read the article very carefully (if you read it at all). This is basically an extension of the existing SVR4 binary emulation that can run Solaris, SCO, etc. binaries on various platforms. It adds support to recognize the signature of Irix binaries, and maps Irix system calls to NetBSD ones. There is no MIPS emulation involved for other platforms, not that it would be impossible to do it at the kernel level (classic MacOS must do something like that for 68k emulation), but there's no mention of that in the paper. And since Irix has never supported any platform other than MIPS, its pretty clear that while you might be able to get this to compile on x86 or other platforms you will not actually be able to run real Irix programs without a MIPS system.
1. Lots of older SGI hardware is sold used without an OS, and for hobbyists etc. it might not be affordable to purchase an Irix license to play with it.
2. There is lots of non-SGI MIPS hardware that can't run Irix, but is supported by NetBSD. Obviously Irix can't be installed on this stuff, but it should be just as able to take advantage of this emulation as an SGI running NetBSD.
The addition of one more port (really not a full port, since the Xbox is x86) does not change the overall picture wrt. NetBSD and Linux. There are already a few platforms (newer PA-RISC systems and old PPC macs come to mind) Linux supports well that NetBSD cannot work on at all, but if you look at the full list of NetBSD-supported systems, you'll see probably numerous architectures so obscure that linux is NEVER going to support them. And its support for those that set NetBSD apart.
Why not use the proven high-performance IBM power4 design instead. Why design something brand new that will have "less" performance that the already existing 64bit single/dual core power4 design.
From the register article:
It needs to remain competitive with entry-level workstations against the likes of Sun and HP's Alpha, where the size and heat dissipation of the mighty POWER4 have kept it out of systems below $12,000. IBM's desktop workstations still run POWER3
IBM would need to design this chip even if Apple didn't exist, simply because the current Power4 cannot be produced cheaply enough for a $10,000 workstation, much less a $800 macintosh.
Gentoo has been calling their kernels "2.4.19-rX" since 2.4.19-pre1 came out. Its meaningless. Other distributions have also been tracking the 2.4.19 preleases, but they have kept the version number at 2.4.18. If you download that gentoo source you'll notice it actually notice that it starts with a 2.4.18 tarball and then applies a huge patch.
I think programming classes are moving toward turning source online now. The system I'm familiar will even tell you if the code compiles or not when you submit it.
I use boot floppies too but I suppose its just a matter of time until dealing with CD-RWs is practical enough as to make disks obsolete for almost everything they are used for. As long as I have to deal with mkisofs and cdrecord every time I want to master a CD I'll go with floppies though.
It happens differently, and maybe not as fast, but it does happen. Of course user error is usually at fault (that would explain the extra copy of freetype I had installed in/usr/local that the pango configure script didn't like...)
But then if you leave Windows 2000 (yeah, the article wasn't really talking about 9x, which is in a whole different league...) in its default state it doesn't crash that much either.
And I have had badly misconfigured linux boxen that have stayed up for months anyway. The ability to successfully forward packets and occasionally serve a web page without crashing does not equate to a lack of cruft.
Re:Unstable in XP huh? thank god for linux
on
AGP4X vs. AGP8X
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· Score: 2
Well actually the driver he's using is a proprietary closed-source driver based on the same codebase as nVidia's windows driver. Linus and the rest of the kernel developers have nothing to do with them, in fact they basically hate them since they use their own kernel modules which add extra instability.
Addendum: there is nothing wrong with taking an older commodity PC and modifying it to run newer hardware. I have a couple of very solidly built full-AT desktop cases that I can't wait to put to use with newer guts (perhaps after some modifications, or finding decent AT mainboards). There is no historical loss in discarding the original 286 or whatever was in it before, that stuff is still very widely available and basically worthless.
I totally agree. There are some situations when it is acceptable. If you come across a chassis that has been completely stripped of all its original hardware (or enough that there is no hope of ever getting it working in its original form), I guess shoehorning PC parts into it is a better fate than letting it be thrown away. But the thought that someone would take a working original Amiga, or next cube, or other funky old system, and knowingly replace the original hardware with commodity PC junk, makes me shudder.
Thats a flawed analogy. What is available in record stores is decided by the record companies and store management, and can properly be regarded as artificial. The selection on peer-to-peer systems is literally the contents of the hard drives (or whatever portion they choose to make available for sharing) of all of the people who use the system. And these people are the subject of all of this controversy. If you think that anywhere near 1/5 (the figure given out by the original poster) of the music downloaded by people is not pirated commercial pop music, but rather legal tracks from "independent" bands on mp3.com or wherever, its pure delusion. You may like some of this stuff but as far as the broader picture is concerned, its irrelevant.
My own experience finding music I actually want to listen to (which is admittedly skewed towards my own tastes, largely modern classical music) is that the more commonly available a recording is, the easier it is to pirate it online, whereas anything out of print or on a smaller label, or otherwise less common, almost has to be bought (if it can be found at all, that is). If anything, by making availability directly proportional to the existing market presence, internet music piracy (lets be honest) makes commercial pop music even more dominant. But the record companies oppose it anyway, since it simultaneously erodes their ability to charge money for their product (and this is more in the future than now -- lossy compression sucks right now, and broadband is not that widespread -- we haven't seen anything of its true potential effects yet).
The RIAA will interpret this as 1/5 of the population of America will never buy CDs and they're losing out. HOWEVER, this could simply be the large (and growing) faction of Americans who are discovering independant artists via the net and downloading music free legally. They then support the artist through T-shirts and concerts.
Dear me. You can't actually believe this can you? Have you ever looked at the majority of what is available for download on peer-to-peer systems?
Mandrake needs to make the 64-bit version a more server-friendly design....and make it less desktop-ish
You know what, I would agree with you that mandrake in general should be less bloated. But I don't think that de-emphasizing the desktop for x86-64 is wise at all--if anything they should make it even more desktop-focused than the current x86 version. Why? Well, its very likely that some kind of Linux (along with NetBSD of course) will be the only usable operating system on the x86-64 platform when it arrives. There will be a brief window, when the hardware is available, but Windows hasn't been ported yet, that running a free *nix will be the only option for anyone who wants to use x86-64 hardware.
Of course it will be used in a lot of servers, but these people won't choose mandrake anyway (I would be surprised if any of the major distributions don't have x86-64 distributions available soon after the hardware is publicly released, as long as a good compiler is available and most common software compiles with minimal trouble). But certainly people will be drawn to this platform for high-end desktop applications also, and the very fact that there will be no full-performance native alternative will render many of the typical arguments against desktop linux moot, and offer an opportunity to draw users in who might not consider it otherwise. So I think there NEEDS to be a good desktop distribution for x86-64 available when the hardware arrives.
They didn't let Jon Katz loose on this one. He surely would have cut-and-pasted something from one of his other lame reviews about how this was "out of touch with the new sense of unity and trust in government that has captured the nation since September 11" or some such thing.
Yes, really, in times like these, critical thought is more relevant than ever.
Its kind of old, a FIC Neptune mini-NLX system. If you are at all familiar with the NLX chassis layout, the CPU is placed in the upper right corner of the motherboard, directly in front of the front case fan. There is a small duct focusing the fan on the CPU, and as there isn't even a place to plug a CPU-mounted fan in, you have to use a passive cooler and hope the case fan is sufficient. It was designed for Pentium II and first-generation celeron systems, apparently the motherboard can run coppermines though...so far, with a slow celeron, its been fine with no CPU fan.
This story, for some reason, seems to epitomize perfectly what I have been feeling about PC video games for the past couple of years:
First, its a port of a console game. Any successful PC game these days, except for a few extremely successful franchises, either is ported from a console, or is ported to a console immediately. Except for those few extremely successful games, the financial requirements almost require that it be available on as many platforms as possible. The kind of diversity and originality that used to characterize computer games, since their origin in text-based strategy and adventure games in fact, can no longer be supported by the adolescent and console-driven market of today.
Second, the hardware requirements are completely out of touch with most computers actually in use. A lot of people who don't play video games probably have computers less than half as fast as the recommended system, and are quite content with them. Aside from people with new machines, and people building systems specifically for playing video games, it is out of reach of a surprisingly large number of computer users.
And the people who have the hardware to run this...a strong majority of them are probably sufficiently involved with video games that they own a Playstation 2 anyway. Considering this I wouldn't be surprised if video games on the PC disappear altogether shortly, especially as special-purpose toy systems like video game consoles increase in power. This could be a potentially postitive development in two ways, not only removing a major impediment to the proliferation of Free operating systems on desktop PCs, but also removing a large subset of users from the Wintel orbit entirely (after all, whats the only PC operating system you can run on a Playstation 2...yeah, thats right, [GNU/]Linux).
Look at a GeForce4 MX, the matrox having better 2D quality is now a myth.
I know of no such card. That is, in fact, a chipset. Nvidia does not manufacture any cards themselves. And the problems with 2d quality have never had to do with the chipsets themselves, but with the post-DAC filtering. And this is highly dependent on the board maker. So, there have always been some people whose nvidia-based cards have looked just fine, and others who have gotten crap. It may be that the standards on the reference cards have gotten higher, so that there are more in the first category now than in the past, but it still sounds like it is highly variable depending on board manufacturer.
Meanwhile, get a Matrox card, and you are *guaranteed* top-class 2d output. This is why they are still business, considering the poor performance of their recent parts, and an area in which they still have yet to be bested.
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No, I don't think you read the article very carefully (if you read it at all). This is basically an extension of the existing SVR4 binary emulation that can run Solaris, SCO, etc. binaries on various platforms. It adds support to recognize the signature of Irix binaries, and maps Irix system calls to NetBSD ones. There is no MIPS emulation involved for other platforms, not that it would be impossible to do it at the kernel level (classic MacOS must do something like that for 68k emulation), but there's no mention of that in the paper. And since Irix has never supported any platform other than MIPS, its pretty clear that while you might be able to get this to compile on x86 or other platforms you will not actually be able to run real Irix programs without a MIPS system.
I don't know how they could possibly match the, umm, err, flawless standard of excellence set by the incomparable linux VM.
A couple possibilities:
1. Lots of older SGI hardware is sold used without an OS, and for hobbyists etc. it might not be affordable to purchase an Irix license to play with it.
2. There is lots of non-SGI MIPS hardware that can't run Irix, but is supported by NetBSD. Obviously Irix can't be installed on this stuff, but it should be just as able to take advantage of this emulation as an SGI running NetBSD.
The addition of one more port (really not a full port, since the Xbox is x86) does not change the overall picture wrt. NetBSD and Linux. There are already a few platforms (newer PA-RISC systems and old PPC macs come to mind) Linux supports well that NetBSD cannot work on at all, but if you look at the full list of NetBSD-supported systems, you'll see probably numerous architectures so obscure that linux is NEVER going to support them. And its support for those that set NetBSD apart.
Why not use the proven high-performance IBM power4 design instead. Why design something brand new that will have "less" performance that the already existing 64bit single/dual core power4 design.
From the register article:
It needs to remain competitive with entry-level workstations against the likes of Sun and HP's Alpha, where the size and heat dissipation of the mighty POWER4 have kept it out of systems below $12,000. IBM's desktop workstations still run POWER3
IBM would need to design this chip even if Apple didn't exist, simply because the current Power4 cannot be produced cheaply enough for a $10,000 workstation, much less a $800 macintosh.
Gentoo has been calling their kernels "2.4.19-rX" since 2.4.19-pre1 came out. Its meaningless. Other distributions have also been tracking the 2.4.19 preleases, but they have kept the version number at 2.4.18. If you download that gentoo source you'll notice it actually notice that it starts with a 2.4.18 tarball and then applies a huge patch.
I think programming classes are moving toward turning source online now. The system I'm familiar will even tell you if the code compiles or not when you submit it.
I use boot floppies too but I suppose its just a matter of time until dealing with CD-RWs is practical enough as to make disks obsolete for almost everything they are used for. As long as I have to deal with mkisofs and cdrecord every time I want to master a CD I'll go with floppies though.
It happens differently, and maybe not as fast, but it does happen. Of course user error is usually at fault (that would explain the extra copy of freetype I had installed in /usr/local that the pango configure script didn't like...)
But then if you leave Windows 2000 (yeah, the article wasn't really talking about 9x, which is in a whole different league...) in its default state it doesn't crash that much either.
And I have had badly misconfigured linux boxen that have stayed up for months anyway. The ability to successfully forward packets and occasionally serve a web page without crashing does not equate to a lack of cruft.
Well actually the driver he's using is a proprietary closed-source driver based on the same codebase as nVidia's windows driver. Linus and the rest of the kernel developers have nothing to do with them, in fact they basically hate them since they use their own kernel modules which add extra instability.
Addendum: there is nothing wrong with taking an older commodity PC and modifying it to run newer hardware. I have a couple of very solidly built full-AT desktop cases that I can't wait to put to use with newer guts (perhaps after some modifications, or finding decent AT mainboards). There is no historical loss in discarding the original 286 or whatever was in it before, that stuff is still very widely available and basically worthless.
I totally agree. There are some situations when it is acceptable. If you come across a chassis that has been completely stripped of all its original hardware (or enough that there is no hope of ever getting it working in its original form), I guess shoehorning PC parts into it is a better fate than letting it be thrown away. But the thought that someone would take a working original Amiga, or next cube, or other funky old system, and knowingly replace the original hardware with commodity PC junk, makes me shudder.
Thats a flawed analogy. What is available in record stores is decided by the record companies and store management, and can properly be regarded as artificial. The selection on peer-to-peer systems is literally the contents of the hard drives (or whatever portion they choose to make available for sharing) of all of the people who use the system. And these people are the subject of all of this controversy. If you think that anywhere near 1/5 (the figure given out by the original poster) of the music downloaded by people is not pirated commercial pop music, but rather legal tracks from "independent" bands on mp3.com or wherever, its pure delusion. You may like some of this stuff but as far as the broader picture is concerned, its irrelevant.
My own experience finding music I actually want to listen to (which is admittedly skewed towards my own tastes, largely modern classical music) is that the more commonly available a recording is, the easier it is to pirate it online, whereas anything out of print or on a smaller label, or otherwise less common, almost has to be bought (if it can be found at all, that is). If anything, by making availability directly proportional to the existing market presence, internet music piracy (lets be honest) makes commercial pop music even more dominant. But the record companies oppose it anyway, since it simultaneously erodes their ability to charge money for their product (and this is more in the future than now -- lossy compression sucks right now, and broadband is not that widespread -- we haven't seen anything of its true potential effects yet).
But why port NetBSD to the S/390 when it runs on the VAX already?
That sounds suspicious...are you sure its not illegal?
You know what, I would agree with you that mandrake in general should be less bloated. But I don't think that de-emphasizing the desktop for x86-64 is wise at all--if anything they should make it even more desktop-focused than the current x86 version. Why? Well, its very likely that some kind of Linux (along with NetBSD of course) will be the only usable operating system on the x86-64 platform when it arrives. There will be a brief window, when the hardware is available, but Windows hasn't been ported yet, that running a free *nix will be the only option for anyone who wants to use x86-64 hardware.
Of course it will be used in a lot of servers, but these people won't choose mandrake anyway (I would be surprised if any of the major distributions don't have x86-64 distributions available soon after the hardware is publicly released, as long as a good compiler is available and most common software compiles with minimal trouble). But certainly people will be drawn to this platform for high-end desktop applications also, and the very fact that there will be no full-performance native alternative will render many of the typical arguments against desktop linux moot, and offer an opportunity to draw users in who might not consider it otherwise. So I think there NEEDS to be a good desktop distribution for x86-64 available when the hardware arrives.
They didn't let Jon Katz loose on this one. He surely would have cut-and-pasted something from one of his other lame reviews about how this was "out of touch with the new sense of unity and trust in government that has captured the nation since September 11" or some such thing.
Yes, really, in times like these, critical thought is more relevant than ever.
Since as we know, Russia was a paradise of free expression prior to 1917.
Its kind of old, a FIC Neptune mini-NLX system. If you are at all familiar with the NLX chassis layout, the CPU is placed in the upper right corner of the motherboard, directly in front of the front case fan. There is a small duct focusing the fan on the CPU, and as there isn't even a place to plug a CPU-mounted fan in, you have to use a passive cooler and hope the case fan is sufficient. It was designed for Pentium II and first-generation celeron systems, apparently the motherboard can run coppermines though...so far, with a slow celeron, its been fine with no CPU fan.
I've always preferred ed myself.
This story, for some reason, seems to epitomize perfectly what I have been feeling about PC video games for the past couple of years:
First, its a port of a console game. Any successful PC game these days, except for a few extremely successful franchises, either is ported from a console, or is ported to a console immediately. Except for those few extremely successful games, the financial requirements almost require that it be available on as many platforms as possible. The kind of diversity and originality that used to characterize computer games, since their origin in text-based strategy and adventure games in fact, can no longer be supported by the adolescent and console-driven market of today.
Second, the hardware requirements are completely out of touch with most computers actually in use. A lot of people who don't play video games probably have computers less than half as fast as the recommended system, and are quite content with them. Aside from people with new machines, and people building systems specifically for playing video games, it is out of reach of a surprisingly large number of computer users.
And the people who have the hardware to run this...a strong majority of them are probably sufficiently involved with video games that they own a Playstation 2 anyway. Considering this I wouldn't be surprised if video games on the PC disappear altogether shortly, especially as special-purpose toy systems like video game consoles increase in power. This could be a potentially postitive development in two ways, not only removing a major impediment to the proliferation of Free operating systems on desktop PCs, but also removing a large subset of users from the Wintel orbit entirely (after all, whats the only PC operating system you can run on a Playstation 2...yeah, thats right, [GNU/]Linux).
nt
is the word you are looking for
If these were in a high-quality lossless format it would quite likely be worth it. But mp3 -- yeah it sounds okay, but its not worth paying for.
I know of no such card. That is, in fact, a chipset. Nvidia does not manufacture any cards themselves. And the problems with 2d quality have never had to do with the chipsets themselves, but with the post-DAC filtering. And this is highly dependent on the board maker. So, there have always been some people whose nvidia-based cards have looked just fine, and others who have gotten crap. It may be that the standards on the reference cards have gotten higher, so that there are more in the first category now than in the past, but it still sounds like it is highly variable depending on board manufacturer.
Meanwhile, get a Matrox card, and you are *guaranteed* top-class 2d output. This is why they are still business, considering the poor performance of their recent parts, and an area in which they still have yet to be bested.