Nothing like the impending death of your company to finally get your ass in gear. We've seen Compaq start from lumbering around with the DEC merger not knowing what to do with and operating in the RED. To where we stand today almost 2 years later where they're actually "making" money. Compaq has realized finally that they can't be the baby IBM DEC used to be. Believe me there is plenty of belt tightning left to be done and when it's finished Compaq will be as lean and mean as Dell and with a R&D division that rivals IBM. We should see them finally stabalize in early 2003. As for HP, They'll be missed... Fiona is an idiot. More of HP is comprimising to be part of Compaq than vice versa and the old guard just doesnt want to let go.
Having worked for them before I know all too well
how they view 'any' product when it comes to thing they ultimatley care about, Money. You guys want openmail to stick around? Start contacting Samsung on a reg basis. Get in contact with the project manager and the developers. TELL them exactly what you want i.e group calender. Offer to beta test new release and return quality bug reports and recommendations. Recommend openmail to your colleges. You see Samsung being a huge company that makes money in so many different ways. When they have a product X that may not have as high a revenue output as they had hoped for the next quarter (not year) they 'will' begin to plan to reduce the resources allocated to X to something else that is proven to make money. They do it and they do it often... Samsung uses 'very' conservative busniness practices. I would have MUCH rather had IBM take over openmail.
This is getting stupid... I am tired of coporations like MS putting rules and regs on 'my' data. Not only that, reserving the right to look into my 'personal' computer. I couldn't give a crap about.NET, office xp, or the latest game (more of the same). Tell me, somebody please tell me why I should bother investing anymore money in the wintel monopoly (that includes AMD). It's time to cut damn platform loose (x86/windows). I'm not waiting for Linux to catch up to the 'desktop', I need to get my work done now and my free time is valuable. Taking into account Apple's wisdom on how they handle mp3s and how easily they make DVD buring. Does anyone have to look any further for a platform that will allow you the freedom to do what you want with digital media? My advice to the masses is to get off the cheap PC crack and INVEST in a computing solution that is there to serve you, not vice versa. My PII 400 run W2K (what im typing this on) is almost 4 YEARS old and it probably has a few more years in it. My 600 Mhz Alpha is older than that and it STILL kicks ass. Where do you kids get this money from to blow on 2GHz machines to play Quake a little faster? Point is, buy a damn computer, build it well, and stick with it. You wanna break MS's back? Start buying macs and buying mac software from companies that don't include MS. If you just can't avoid it BUY MS office for the mac (you already have IE). You don't need anything else to talk with the rest of the world and there's always PDF. Also let me point out that MAC is the ONLY other platform you can buy office for. Linux is great and Linux has lots of potential though I fear that someone will have to resurrect the long lost art of 'cat hearding' for it to reach any serious goal.
I absolutley LOVE the Evil Dead series. I started with Army of Darkness and 'then' discovered the
prequels. I've been a junkie ever since. It's great that the movies are being re-released on DVD, I own them all. I have the action figure too.Still looking for a T-shirt like I saw the Lucy Lawless wear once on I think the Daily Show on comedy central. The comic is cool.It doesn't matter if there is a fourth movie in the series. let them stand as they are, Classic. I hope I see you on more prime time TV like Xena and Jack.Finally because of/. woefully short allowance of charecters for a sig I am not allowed to display beyond 120 chars on a regular basis. What I have been putting on the end of my email since 1998 is below:-) Well, Good luck and God bless in whatever you do.
Sincerly Yours,
Peter Petrakis
--
www.alphalinux.org
Peter Petrakis Warrior/Engineer ppetrakis@alphalinux.org
"Oh my God! They killed Xena! You bastards!!"
"'BLAM!!' Who the hell are you!? Name's Ash 'click clock' Housewares..."
I'm surprised to see the lack of "I recompiled everything using this on my Athlon and my performance increase was XX%". Simply said, It's an optimized x86 compiler and any processor that uses that instruction set should benefit from using it. Intel releasing it for 'free' gives HPTC guys one less hoop to jump through when tweaking their applicatiions. It also adds value to Intel processors in general.
Oh yeah, backwards compatbility, Have you looked at the SPEC scores for their compatibilty? About what a Pentium 90MHz can do... To this very day Alphas can emulate the x86 instruction set FASTER in SOFTWARE than intel can in hardware. FYI that would be equivilent to atleast a PII 400 on an EV6 alpha machine.
As for porting applications you don't even have to do that right away. The DEC/Compaq compilers have the abillity the only use the lower 32 bits of the address space. Which is sometimes the only way to get an application for you platform like netscape. BTW, That compiler team works for INTEL
now.
Also the integration of LDT aka hypertransport makes hammer capable of some extreme throughput.
You can learn more about hypertransport at http://www.api-networks.com .
As for microsoft. It's really hard to justify the development and ongoing costs of developing XP and the entire backoffice lineup when the platform it runs on is barley into production and has zero market presence or readily available killer apps.
Draw your own conclusions but make no mistake. No one is out of this game yet. That includes AMD, Intel, Compaq, AND HP.
By far the FASTEST VM I've ever seen, especially when it comes to graphics. The limbo language is exceptionally clean. For those who don't know what inferno is it's closly related to the plan 9
OS by bell labs. More information on inferno can be found here. http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/concepts.html .
Those of you running windows, check out the plug-in demos. While they are running take note that when it's running graphics the cpu usage on your system should be no more than 5-7%. On the otherhand, equivilent java programs like to peg your CPU whenever you try and do some mediocre graphics.
verizon has no concept of why a customer would want a static IP. Even under their business DSL packages. Tell them you want to host your own email and they'll recommend their web hosting services. Some $225 a year for webspace and some pop boxes. Oh. no imap, atleast they dont mention it and the girl I spoke to (fresh out of training)
had trouble understanding what a static ip was. I didnt want to push my luck.
So whats left for high speed internet besides ISDN
where I can get a freaking static IP and do as I please? There's choice one communications but they are just too damn expensive. Do I have to buy a T or a frame?
It's such a pain in the ass. After northpoint went down and I lost my DSL I have yet to find a provider that Bell doesnt have by the balls. I'm making a 300-500 investment in hardware and installation (up front costs nnot counting rebates) and I don't have the semblance of security that the company thats serving my DSL will be there tomorrow. Nevermind the CLECs.
Peter,
using an analog modem for the last 6 months.
Paying $40 a month for "extended basic" cable
so I can have 200 channels and nothing good to
watch. The "only" reason I don't have plan basic is cuz of scifi (farscape) & tnt (witchblade).
When you're coercesed into paying more for your
TV entertainment than it's worth, no wonder
people won't pay for online content. Content these
days is recycled and boring... Impress me and make me "want" to spend my money, not loathe.
What is it that seems to drive the Linux
community to copycat windows at every turn?
Pick your favorite example, there's more than
one for sure. slashdot bashes MS for their
lack of innovation blah blah blah. Oh, but when
we turn around. Make a knock off and spit in
their face of their OWN new idea. That's OK.
Instead of licking MS's nuts why don't these
developers invent the next great "thing"
that will turn the world on it's ear? If I wanted
something that ran everything like it does on
windows/x86. I'D RUN WINDOWS!
Lawyers don't make demands for money upfront.
They threaten first and expect you to back down.
Also 2500 euro sounds awefully cheap for use
of adobe's trademark. Ignore him. --
www.alphalinux.org
Actually they have a full binary translater & emulator that will run your SunOS apps on Tru64.
It's called Freeport express. I don't think it's been updated in a while though. They probably do have solaris migration kits you just have to look.
Peter --
www.alphalinux.org
Rip off your favorite Evil Dead or AoD oneliner
on
Duke's All Out of Gum
·
· Score: 1
Like Duke isn't a complete rip off of Ash
anyways.:-)
I hear this song and dance from folks that used
to point out how slow Alpha is on linux comapared to XYZ. Until a few years ago I couldnt refute their claims. That is until Compaq ported their hand tunned UNIX C/C++/Fortran compilers to Linux. Behold,The Alpha spanked everything in sight. The same deal goes here with PPC.
GCC was not optimized for speed. It was optimized
to be as portable as possible first. Where does GCC get worked on the most? X86 of course. So it's a big surprise it's the fastest supported
platform?
A FAIR test would involve using a compiler from an
independant vendor like KAI or the Portland group.
Then use SPEC XYZ , STREAMS, DRYSTONE, etc etc. That's a fair test. Alas I know KAI doesnt support PPC except on AIX and I don't know about Portland. Can Linux/PPC run AIX binaries? Linux/Alpha can run DUNIX binaries.
Another reason why a compile test of CISC vs RISC
is unfair. RISC being a reduced instruction set (hope I didnt surprise anyone with that) requires the assembler to put together more instructions
to build said binary. This takes more time and also results in a larger binary. This is where a RISC implementation needs to be FAST. Alpha has that advantage (the huge/fast cache and memory throughput helps ALOT), Apple/PPC doesnt.
Well how do you solve that problem then? You put
people on GCC or you contract Cygnus to do the work for you. API Networks has done the later and the changes have been folded in to GCC already and will be there in 3.0 .
For Apple to do such a thing their marketing/sales
department would have to show that spending money
there would increase hardware sales. That or the press alone is worth the cost. We're not talking millions of dollars here but it's not small change either.
The people who I would bring to their attention is IBM. With all the work going into S/390 of course they're going to want those compilers up to snuff. Get them to work on glibc too if you can.
It's been ported to UNIX. There's a version out there developed by someone that lets you write an application in TV and that will support Console and X11 (using QT). TV is what is used to build Borland's fine Turbo Debugger GUI, For all you TASM fans out there. I've been told Slang is a MUCH better alternative to curses though I've not coded in either. I havent done console programming in a loong time and want to keep it that way:-).
Like for example Choice One Communications, www.choiceonecom.com . They are more expensive than most if you only join for a year but if you sign a 5 year contract the DSL prices are about the same as Covad. They also offer T's, telco local/longdistance, and colocation. If you want a net connection that you can count on never going away switch to ISDN. To avoid the ridiculous rates charged by the phone company find a ISP that support CSV. ONly 56K per channel but you avoid that stupid tarrif. Last I had ISDN like this I paid $80 a month which included the cost of the ISDN line from the local bell AND the ISP for 112K ISDN.
convienient that you omit the only mature 64 bit port that has almost as many distributions available 2nd only to x86. That would be the Alpha Processor. You can buy then new for around 2k and used under 1k.
API Networks (http://www.api-networks.com/products/cs20.shtml) has built this same capibility for their dual 833 Alpha CS20 1 U server. Which includes a flash managment/failsafe/diagnostics firmware (that fits in under 200k) called "Alpha Diagnostics Environment" or ADE for short. So for example if you say burn a bad kernel you can still just start your system and enter ADE and flash in a new one. You can also write to flash from Linux. Makes firmware upgrades and kernel changes alot more convenient. Average boot time on a box that doesnt have to do a VGA bios init is
under 10 secs. From power on to login prompt.
Peter --
www.alphalinux.org
I already own the macross set , 6 episodes per tape. What's the DVD going to do for me? I'd rather them finish the sentinals series and do the movie they always promised... --
www.alphalinux.org
Amazing these days almost anyone is an "engineer" no matter what they do. Engineer to me means someone who follows the scientific method to solving problems and later proving that method again. The later is called "regression testing".
Funny word eh? It's seems to be a funny word to the OS community. I can count all the projects I know that have decent regression testing on one hand. To the point... Reg testing is not fun. Devising test suites are not fun. Running through then X number is not fun. Recording variences in said tests is not fun. Anyone who's an Electrical Engineer knows exactly what I'm talking about. It's boring and repetative work. Change ONE thing you're rechecking everything all over again. For the demands making, running, and recording such tests is one of the big reasons why your casual hacker won't even attempt such a thing. It's usually the project leaders/core that HAS to implement this and if they dont do it no one else will. Thats part of the quality issue. Others include like the gentleman who posted the article said/quoted. Not planning features per a scheduale or pushing in features last min. etc etc.
It all really comes down to how organized the core is and if the structure they create can attract the right people.
actually current versions of GCC like the one included in RH 7.0 are approaching the same speed as Compaq's own C compiler for alphalinux. Compaq's C/C++ compilers are free and available for download at Compaq's site. NOTHING can touch Compaq's FORTRAN compiler which is also free for Alphalinux.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing like the impending death of your company to finally get your ass in gear. We've seen Compaq start from lumbering around with the DEC merger not knowing what to do with and operating in the RED. To where we stand today almost 2 years later where they're actually "making" money. Compaq has realized finally that they can't be the baby IBM DEC used to be. Believe me there is plenty of belt tightning left to be done and when it's finished Compaq will be as lean and mean as Dell and with a R&D division that rivals IBM. We should see them finally stabalize in early 2003. As for HP, They'll be missed... Fiona is an idiot. More of HP is comprimising to be part of Compaq than vice versa and the old guard just doesnt want to let go.
Peter
Having worked for them before I know all too well
how they view 'any' product when it comes to thing they ultimatley care about, Money. You guys want openmail to stick around? Start contacting Samsung on a reg basis. Get in contact with the project manager and the developers. TELL them exactly what you want i.e group calender. Offer to beta test new release and return quality bug reports and recommendations. Recommend openmail to your colleges. You see Samsung being a huge company that makes money in so many different ways. When they have a product X that may not have as high a revenue output as they had hoped for the next quarter (not year) they 'will' begin to plan to reduce the resources allocated to X to something else that is proven to make money. They do it and they do it often... Samsung uses 'very' conservative busniness practices. I would have MUCH rather had IBM take over openmail.
Peter
This is getting stupid... I am tired of coporations like MS putting rules and regs on 'my' data. Not only that, reserving the right to look into my 'personal' computer. I couldn't give a crap about .NET, office xp, or the latest game (more of the same). Tell me, somebody please tell me why I should bother investing anymore money in the wintel monopoly (that includes AMD). It's time to cut damn platform loose (x86/windows). I'm not waiting for Linux to catch up to the 'desktop', I need to get my work done now and my free time is valuable. Taking into account Apple's wisdom on how they handle mp3s and how easily they make DVD buring. Does anyone have to look any further for a platform that will allow you the freedom to do what you want with digital media? My advice to the masses is to get off the cheap PC crack and INVEST in a computing solution that is there to serve you, not vice versa. My PII 400 run W2K (what im typing this on) is almost 4 YEARS old and it probably has a few more years in it. My 600 Mhz Alpha is older than that and it STILL kicks ass. Where do you kids get this money from to blow on 2GHz machines to play Quake a little faster? Point is, buy a damn computer, build it well, and stick with it. You wanna break MS's back? Start buying macs and buying mac software from companies that don't include MS. If you just can't avoid it BUY MS office for the mac (you already have IE). You don't need anything else to talk with the rest of the world and there's always PDF. Also let me point out that MAC is the ONLY other platform you can buy office for. Linux is great and Linux has lots of potential though I fear that someone will have to resurrect the long lost art of 'cat hearding' for it to reach any serious goal.
Peter
I absolutley LOVE the Evil Dead series. I started with Army of Darkness and 'then' discovered the /. woefully short allowance of charecters for a sig I am not allowed to display beyond 120 chars on a regular basis. What I have been putting on the end of my email since 1998 is below :-) Well, Good luck and God bless in whatever you do.
prequels. I've been a junkie ever since. It's great that the movies are being re-released on DVD, I own them all. I have the action figure too.Still looking for a T-shirt like I saw the Lucy Lawless wear once on I think the Daily Show on comedy central. The comic is cool.It doesn't matter if there is a fourth movie in the series. let them stand as they are, Classic. I hope I see you on more prime time TV like Xena and Jack.Finally because of
Sincerly Yours,
Peter Petrakis
--
www.alphalinux.org
Peter Petrakis Warrior/Engineer ppetrakis@alphalinux.org
"Oh my God! They killed Xena! You bastards!!"
"'BLAM!!' Who the hell are you!? Name's Ash 'click clock' Housewares..."
I'm surprised to see the lack of "I recompiled everything using this on my Athlon and my performance increase was XX%". Simply said, It's an optimized x86 compiler and any processor that uses that instruction set should benefit from using it. Intel releasing it for 'free' gives HPTC guys one less hoop to jump through when tweaking their applicatiions. It also adds value to Intel processors in general.
Peter
API NetWorks just released a HyperTransport "Switch" , See the press release .
Interesting stuff. The PDF has some more info
Peter
Oh yeah, backwards compatbility, Have you looked at the SPEC scores for their compatibilty? About what a Pentium 90MHz can do... To this very day Alphas can emulate the x86 instruction set FASTER in SOFTWARE than intel can in hardware. FYI that would be equivilent to atleast a PII 400 on an EV6 alpha machine.
As for porting applications you don't even have to do that right away. The DEC/Compaq compilers have the abillity the only use the lower 32 bits of the address space. Which is sometimes the only way to get an application for you platform like netscape. BTW, That compiler team works for INTEL
now.
Also the integration of LDT aka hypertransport makes hammer capable of some extreme throughput.
You can learn more about hypertransport at http://www.api-networks.com .
As for microsoft. It's really hard to justify the development and ongoing costs of developing XP and the entire backoffice lineup when the platform it runs on is barley into production and has zero market presence or readily available killer apps.
Draw your own conclusions but make no mistake. No one is out of this game yet. That includes AMD, Intel, Compaq, AND HP.
Peter
By far the FASTEST VM I've ever seen, especially when it comes to graphics. The limbo language is exceptionally clean. For those who don't know what inferno is it's closly related to the plan 9
OS by bell labs. More information on inferno can be found here. http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/concepts.html .
Those of you running windows, check out the plug-in demos. While they are running take note that when it's running graphics the cpu usage on your system should be no more than 5-7%. On the otherhand, equivilent java programs like to peg your CPU whenever you try and do some mediocre graphics.
Peter
Thanks. I'll check it out. Oh, The URL :-).
should be www.qwest.com
verizon has no concept of why a customer would want a static IP. Even under their business DSL packages. Tell them you want to host your own email and they'll recommend their web hosting services. Some $225 a year for webspace and some pop boxes. Oh. no imap, atleast they dont mention it and the girl I spoke to (fresh out of training)
had trouble understanding what a static ip was. I didnt want to push my luck.
So whats left for high speed internet besides ISDN
where I can get a freaking static IP and do as I please? There's choice one communications but they are just too damn expensive. Do I have to buy a T or a frame?
It's such a pain in the ass. After northpoint went down and I lost my DSL I have yet to find a provider that Bell doesnt have by the balls. I'm making a 300-500 investment in hardware and installation (up front costs nnot counting rebates) and I don't have the semblance of security that the company thats serving my DSL will be there tomorrow. Nevermind the CLECs.
Peter,
using an analog modem for the last 6 months.
Paying $40 a month for "extended basic" cable
so I can have 200 channels and nothing good to
watch. The "only" reason I don't have plan basic is cuz of scifi (farscape) & tnt (witchblade).
When you're coercesed into paying more for your
TV entertainment than it's worth, no wonder
people won't pay for online content. Content these
days is recycled and boring... Impress me and make me "want" to spend my money, not loathe.
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
What is it that seems to drive the Linux
community to copycat windows at every turn?
Pick your favorite example, there's more than
one for sure. slashdot bashes MS for their
lack of innovation blah blah blah. Oh, but when
we turn around. Make a knock off and spit in
their face of their OWN new idea. That's OK.
Instead of licking MS's nuts why don't these
developers invent the next great "thing"
that will turn the world on it's ear? If I wanted
something that ran everything like it does on
windows/x86. I'D RUN WINDOWS!
Buy a KVM switch and get over it.
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
Lawyers don't make demands for money upfront.
They threaten first and expect you to back down.
Also 2500 euro sounds awefully cheap for use
of adobe's trademark. Ignore him.
--
www.alphalinux.org
Actually they have a full binary translater & emulator that will run your SunOS apps on Tru64.
It's called Freeport express. I don't think it's been updated in a while though. They probably do have solaris migration kits you just have to look.
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
Like Duke isn't a complete rip off of Ash :-)
anyways.
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
They go around and UNPLUG CLEC's DSLAMS ,just because. Happened to me, took them two weeks to
"fix" it.
--
www.alphalinux.org
I hear this song and dance from folks that used
to point out how slow Alpha is on linux comapared to XYZ. Until a few years ago I couldnt refute their claims. That is until Compaq ported their hand tunned UNIX C/C++/Fortran compilers to Linux. Behold,The Alpha spanked everything in sight. The same deal goes here with PPC.
GCC was not optimized for speed. It was optimized
to be as portable as possible first. Where does GCC get worked on the most? X86 of course. So it's a big surprise it's the fastest supported
platform?
A FAIR test would involve using a compiler from an
independant vendor like KAI or the Portland group.
Then use SPEC XYZ , STREAMS, DRYSTONE, etc etc. That's a fair test. Alas I know KAI doesnt support PPC except on AIX and I don't know about Portland. Can Linux/PPC run AIX binaries? Linux/Alpha can run DUNIX binaries.
Another reason why a compile test of CISC vs RISC
is unfair. RISC being a reduced instruction set (hope I didnt surprise anyone with that) requires the assembler to put together more instructions
to build said binary. This takes more time and also results in a larger binary. This is where a RISC implementation needs to be FAST. Alpha has that advantage (the huge/fast cache and memory throughput helps ALOT), Apple/PPC doesnt.
Well how do you solve that problem then? You put
people on GCC or you contract Cygnus to do the work for you. API Networks has done the later and the changes have been folded in to GCC already and will be there in 3.0 .
For Apple to do such a thing their marketing/sales
department would have to show that spending money
there would increase hardware sales. That or the press alone is worth the cost. We're not talking millions of dollars here but it's not small change either.
The people who I would bring to their attention is IBM. With all the work going into S/390 of course they're going to want those compilers up to snuff. Get them to work on glibc too if you can.
So ladies and gentlemen. There you have it.
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
Is better than the devil you don't know.
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
It's been ported to UNIX. There's a version out there developed by someone that lets you write an application in TV and that will support Console and X11 (using QT). TV is what is used to build Borland's fine Turbo Debugger GUI, For all you TASM fans out there. I've been told Slang is a MUCH better alternative to curses though I've not coded in either. I havent done console programming in a loong time and want to keep it that way :-).
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
Like for example Choice One Communications, www.choiceonecom.com . They are more expensive than most if you only join for a year but if you sign a 5 year contract the DSL prices are about the same as Covad. They also offer T's, telco local/longdistance, and colocation. If you want a net connection that you can count on never going away switch to ISDN. To avoid the ridiculous rates charged by the phone company find a ISP that support CSV. ONly 56K per channel but you avoid that stupid tarrif. Last I had ISDN like this I paid $80 a month which included the cost of the ISDN line from the local bell AND the ISP for 112K ISDN.
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
convienient that you omit the only mature 64 bit port that has almost as many distributions available 2nd only to x86. That would be the Alpha Processor. You can buy then new for around 2k and used under 1k.
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
API Networks (http://www.api-networks.com/products/cs20.shtml) has built this same capibility for their dual 833 Alpha CS20 1 U server. Which includes a flash managment/failsafe/diagnostics firmware (that fits in under 200k) called "Alpha Diagnostics Environment" or ADE for short. So for example if you say burn a bad kernel you can still just start your system and enter ADE and flash in a new one. You can also write to flash from Linux. Makes firmware upgrades and kernel changes alot more convenient. Average boot time on a box that doesnt have to do a VGA bios init is under 10 secs. From power on to login prompt.
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
I already own the macross set , 6 episodes per tape. What's the DVD going to do for me? I'd rather them finish the sentinals series and do the movie they always promised...
--
www.alphalinux.org
Amazing these days almost anyone is an "engineer" no matter what they do. Engineer to me means someone who follows the scientific method to solving problems and later proving that method again. The later is called "regression testing".
Funny word eh? It's seems to be a funny word to the OS community. I can count all the projects I know that have decent regression testing on one hand. To the point... Reg testing is not fun. Devising test suites are not fun. Running through then X number is not fun. Recording variences in said tests is not fun. Anyone who's an Electrical Engineer knows exactly what I'm talking about. It's boring and repetative work. Change ONE thing you're rechecking everything all over again. For the demands making, running, and recording such tests is one of the big reasons why your casual hacker won't even attempt such a thing. It's usually the project leaders/core that HAS to implement this and if they dont do it no one else will. Thats part of the quality issue. Others include like the gentleman who posted the article said/quoted. Not planning features per a scheduale or pushing in features last min. etc etc.
It all really comes down to how organized the core is and if the structure they create can attract the right people.
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org
actually current versions of GCC like the one included in RH 7.0 are approaching the same speed as Compaq's own C compiler for alphalinux. Compaq's C/C++ compilers are free and available for download at Compaq's site. NOTHING can touch Compaq's FORTRAN compiler which is also free for Alphalinux.
Peter
--
www.alphalinux.org