Well, try installing linux and windows on those solaris machines.. The problem is, linux drivers are written by developers who have the hardware. Usually these developers are quite tech-savvy and will buy good quality hardware, so the cheaper and lower quality hardware tends to be more poorly supported. Also, in order for drivers to exist someone has to buy the hardware, then develop the drivers.. since the manufacturers wont do it. Thus you have a lag between hardware and driver availability.
My amiga used to boot from cold to the workbench in 6 seconds flat, including the time it took to spin up the HD.. And it had lots of third party crap installed, not just the standard os..
The locked down IE is the best feature of 2003 DESKTOP.. And no, i could never consider any os with a mandatory browser and gui as atall suitable for a server.. What use is all that when the machine is sitting headless in a datacenter? 2003 is more suitable for a corporate desktop than a server of any kind.
Hmm, never had these problems with OSX myself.. Tho even with all the problems you've described, i've never encountered a windows user who hasnt had an even greater number of problems.. The difference is, when a problem is encountered on a non windows platform people complain that the platform is shit. When people encounter problems on windows they just accept them as being normal and continue having the problems as long as they keep using it.
But itanium is still a shared bus system like xeon, so it doesn't scale well unless you totally ignore their multiprocessor support and build your own, like SGI does.
OpenFirmware is a far more powerfull and elegant solution than an embedded 64-bit dos. And it was mentioned that EFI wastes diskspace, that's not good either... atleast OpenFirmware resides on a rom chip. Digital's SRM was also a nice firmware.
Another reason why HP shouldn't have dropped the alpha to develop itanic.. Despite not having been updated for years, the alpha can still hold it's own for floating point math.. If all the development effort that was wasted on the itanic had been poured into the alpha, then the current alpha chips would be completely dominating the floating point benchmarks just like the original alphas did.
The technology is superior, the price is high because theres no economy of scale, it's no more incompatible than any other architecture, and it *did* have workstation vendors.
The reason for the lack of software, user base and lack of economy of scale keeping the price high is entirely the fault of the closed source commercial development model. That is what killed the itanium and is holding back processor innovation. If this had happened years ago you would have no POWER or SPARC chips. Prior to these, sun and IBM were using different incompatible architectures. SUN would still be stuck on motorola 68k compatible chips, in it's time a very good architecture, but it's still an old architecture and was never designed to be extended to 64bit. I'm not sure what IBM were using before POWER..
But the long play formats of VHS came many years later, and noticeably reduces quality even furthur. By the time the long play formats for VHS were being developed, betamax was long forgotten and noone was developing longer playing formats for it.
Itanium is still a far superior technology, HP's compiler produces very good code for it, i assume intel's does too... gcc is badly lagging behind tho and most opensource os's default to gcc... As for non opensource os's, well most software is usually shipped as binaries, and there is no incentive for companies to make binary software for a platform that has no users yet, and no users will buy into the platform until it has commercial binary software available. Either way, the platform is doomed.
But getting linux working on itanic was relatively easy... Intel helped port the kernel, gcc and glibc, and it still cost them a lot less than they paid MS to port windows... After the kernel was done, most userspace apps build just fine, itanic is just another 64bit architecture to linux, just like PPC64, MIPS64 or Alpha that linux has been running on for years.. A vast majority of opensource apps that run on linux are 64bit clean and porting them to itanic was literally just a recompile. You can't do this with closed source vendors, you have to pay/bribe/blackmail them to support your new architecture. They won't do it on their own until you already have a large enough user base, and with the current commercial-dominated software world, the user base won't grow unless the apps are ported. So, your screwed... Even Intel and HP combined didn't have the cash to bribe enough software vendors.
I don't think MIPS or PPC ever even got service packs.. Microsoft used to make some MIPS machines themselves too. Alpha support continued up to sp6a and the release-candidates for win2k.
The thing is microsoft only ever had a half-assed version for itanic, lacking many of the features of the x86 version and having virtually no apps available to run it, either from microsoft or third parties... Therefore, noone bought it.. because noone had ported software to it.. Noone ported software to it because noone bought it..
The only people who made use of them, are running opensource software on them, which is easy to port yourself if it hasn't been done already.. And plenty of people have motive to port it (the hardware vendors for one, HP contributed a lot to the port of linux to the itanic) whereas commercial software vendors have no incentive to port to a new architecture.
See. the closed source commercial business model is stifling hardware innovation. And in years to come, people will still be stuck with chips that have huge chunks of their die space wasted on backwards compatibility circuitry, and software that doesn't take advantage of new features.
Actually it's closed source that's locking people in. Any application where you don't have the sourcecode can't be ported to another architecture unless the vendor does it, and the vendor won't do it unless there#s already a sufficiently large user base using the platform, which wont happen because the closed source apps won't run on it. Note, i'm not saying everything should be freely available opensource under the gpl, but vendors could release their source under a restrictive license, say derivative works become the property of the vendor and you could have a "developer central" where registered users of the software could share unofficial patches and ports, and the developer could benefit from bugfixes and ports to other platforms if they wish. As for code stealing, this happens anyway... lots of people reverse engineer competitors products, but having the source would make it easier to identify when this had happened. Some commercial companies used to release their software complete with source code already..
The reason people haven't gone for the vastly superior alternatives to x86 is because their closed source apps won't run on them. Binary-only app distribution is seriously stifling processor innovation, and to a lesser extent OS innovation.
Microsoft never claimed to have better products, or even products on the same level.. Their claim was that, for what most people used novell for (file and printer sharing) their solution could do the job and was cheaper and easier to use.. They also used their stranglehold over the clients to try and stifle novell. Now opensource is doing the same thing, consider openoffice, it may not have all the features of msoffice right now, but it certainly has all the features the vast majority of users require, and is far cheaper.
Actually, when you buy a mac from apple's store you get the option to buy msoffice with the machine. Apple aren't stopping competitors from offering software preinstalled or bundled with machines, but those vendors have to contact apple and make their software available. It's not apple's job to scout around vendors looking for software they can preinstall.
It's "popular" as you put it, or "grudgingly used widely" to put it more accurately, on the mac platform precisely because it does NOT interoperate well with other applications. Mac users use msoffice because nothing else is as compatible with the windows version of office, and even then the compatibility is nowhere near as good as it should be, even differing versions on the same platform have unreasonably poor compatibility. If msoffice used open formats, you can be sure there would be many more competitors which could open the files, and marketshare of msoffice in it's current state would be very small.. Altho, i'm sure if they had competition, ms would actually improve their products in a half-assed effort to compete.
OSX is perfectly useable. For someone who has no previous experience with computers, they will pick up OSX much faster than windows. The only people who consider OSX to be hard, are people who learnt how to do things in windows by repetition (the way microsoft encourages, the same way you teach an animal) and complain that things are different. Other than that, things in OSX make a lot more sense than windows
Also some of us are really heavy multitaskers... I have many apps open and setup just the way i like them on 10 virtual workspaces. I have ssh logins active to several other machines, i have multiple firefox windows open pretty much maxed out with tabs. If i rebooted this machine, i would have to reload all the apps i'm running.. that would be a HUGE pain in the ass for me.
I agree completely... The only reason i have a windows machine here is for games, and yet whenever possible i play games under linux or macosx. We need a new minimal os designed for games, windows is a terrible platform for games, as are linux and macos.. for comparison purposes, assemble a pc with identical configuration to an xbox, and try running games which also have an xbox port... the xbox version will run MUCH better despite being the same hardware. Why? because there isn't a bloated os wasting your ram and cpu time that would be better spent on the game. A minimal gaming-only os wouldn't have all the insecure crap windows does, the rpc services which can't be turned off etc, all it needs is a driver layer and a tcp stack, and a simple interface to choose from a list of installed games or install a new one from media. It would also make piracy more difficult, since this gaming-os wouldn't offer features like debuggers or development tools etc.
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Which is why we have debian, a precompiled distribution that supports virtually all the architectures linux does.
Well, try installing linux and windows on those solaris machines..
The problem is, linux drivers are written by developers who have the hardware. Usually these developers are quite tech-savvy and will buy good quality hardware, so the cheaper and lower quality hardware tends to be more poorly supported. Also, in order for drivers to exist someone has to buy the hardware, then develop the drivers.. since the manufacturers wont do it. Thus you have a lag between hardware and driver availability.
And it has terminal services, which are very usefull..
But also certain games won't work on it.. rise of nations doesn't atleast.
Well adding extra bits *could* cure some integer overflow bugs...
My amiga used to boot from cold to the workbench in 6 seconds flat, including the time it took to spin up the HD.. And it had lots of third party crap installed, not just the standard os..
The locked down IE is the best feature of 2003 DESKTOP.. And no, i could never consider any os with a mandatory browser and gui as atall suitable for a server.. What use is all that when the machine is sitting headless in a datacenter?
2003 is more suitable for a corporate desktop than a server of any kind.
Hmm, never had these problems with OSX myself.. Tho even with all the problems you've described, i've never encountered a windows user who hasnt had an even greater number of problems.. The difference is, when a problem is encountered on a non windows platform people complain that the platform is shit. When people encounter problems on windows they just accept them as being normal and continue having the problems as long as they keep using it.
But itanium is still a shared bus system like xeon, so it doesn't scale well unless you totally ignore their multiprocessor support and build your own, like SGI does.
OpenFirmware is a far more powerfull and elegant solution than an embedded 64-bit dos. And it was mentioned that EFI wastes diskspace, that's not good either... atleast OpenFirmware resides on a rom chip.
Digital's SRM was also a nice firmware.
Another reason why HP shouldn't have dropped the alpha to develop itanic..
Despite not having been updated for years, the alpha can still hold it's own for floating point math.. If all the development effort that was wasted on the itanic had been poured into the alpha, then the current alpha chips would be completely dominating the floating point benchmarks just like the original alphas did.
And a lot of it, just like a lot of the technology in the pentium line, has been stolen from the alpha.
The technology is superior, the price is high because theres no economy of scale, it's no more incompatible than any other architecture, and it *did* have workstation vendors.
The reason for the lack of software, user base and lack of economy of scale keeping the price high is entirely the fault of the closed source commercial development model. That is what killed the itanium and is holding back processor innovation. If this had happened years ago you would have no POWER or SPARC chips. Prior to these, sun and IBM were using different incompatible architectures. SUN would still be stuck on motorola 68k compatible chips, in it's time a very good architecture, but it's still an old architecture and was never designed to be extended to 64bit. I'm not sure what IBM were using before POWER..
But the long play formats of VHS came many years later, and noticeably reduces quality even furthur. By the time the long play formats for VHS were being developed, betamax was long forgotten and noone was developing longer playing formats for it.
Itanium is still a far superior technology, HP's compiler produces very good code for it, i assume intel's does too... gcc is badly lagging behind tho and most opensource os's default to gcc...
As for non opensource os's, well most software is usually shipped as binaries, and there is no incentive for companies to make binary software for a platform that has no users yet, and no users will buy into the platform until it has commercial binary software available. Either way, the platform is doomed.
But getting linux working on itanic was relatively easy... Intel helped port the kernel, gcc and glibc, and it still cost them a lot less than they paid MS to port windows... After the kernel was done, most userspace apps build just fine, itanic is just another 64bit architecture to linux, just like PPC64, MIPS64 or Alpha that linux has been running on for years.. A vast majority of opensource apps that run on linux are 64bit clean and porting them to itanic was literally just a recompile.
You can't do this with closed source vendors, you have to pay/bribe/blackmail them to support your new architecture. They won't do it on their own until you already have a large enough user base, and with the current commercial-dominated software world, the user base won't grow unless the apps are ported. So, your screwed... Even Intel and HP combined didn't have the cash to bribe enough software vendors.
I don't think MIPS or PPC ever even got service packs.. Microsoft used to make some MIPS machines themselves too. Alpha support continued up to sp6a and the release-candidates for win2k.
The thing is microsoft only ever had a half-assed version for itanic, lacking many of the features of the x86 version and having virtually no apps available to run it, either from microsoft or third parties...
Therefore, noone bought it.. because noone had ported software to it..
Noone ported software to it because noone bought it..
The only people who made use of them, are running opensource software on them, which is easy to port yourself if it hasn't been done already.. And plenty of people have motive to port it (the hardware vendors for one, HP contributed a lot to the port of linux to the itanic) whereas commercial software vendors have no incentive to port to a new architecture.
See. the closed source commercial business model is stifling hardware innovation. And in years to come, people will still be stuck with chips that have huge chunks of their die space wasted on backwards compatibility circuitry, and software that doesn't take advantage of new features.
Actually it's closed source that's locking people in. Any application where you don't have the sourcecode can't be ported to another architecture unless the vendor does it, and the vendor won't do it unless there#s already a sufficiently large user base using the platform, which wont happen because the closed source apps won't run on it.
Note, i'm not saying everything should be freely available opensource under the gpl, but vendors could release their source under a restrictive license, say derivative works become the property of the vendor and you could have a "developer central" where registered users of the software could share unofficial patches and ports, and the developer could benefit from bugfixes and ports to other platforms if they wish. As for code stealing, this happens anyway... lots of people reverse engineer competitors products, but having the source would make it easier to identify when this had happened. Some commercial companies used to release their software complete with source code already..
The reason people haven't gone for the vastly superior alternatives to x86 is because their closed source apps won't run on them. Binary-only app distribution is seriously stifling processor innovation, and to a lesser extent OS innovation.
Except that IE actually claims to be mozilla 4.0 in it's user-agent string.
Microsoft never claimed to have better products, or even products on the same level.. Their claim was that, for what most people used novell for (file and printer sharing) their solution could do the job and was cheaper and easier to use.. They also used their stranglehold over the clients to try and stifle novell.
Now opensource is doing the same thing, consider openoffice, it may not have all the features of msoffice right now, but it certainly has all the features the vast majority of users require, and is far cheaper.
Actually, when you buy a mac from apple's store you get the option to buy msoffice with the machine. Apple aren't stopping competitors from offering software preinstalled or bundled with machines, but those vendors have to contact apple and make their software available. It's not apple's job to scout around vendors looking for software they can preinstall.
It's "popular" as you put it, or "grudgingly used widely" to put it more accurately, on the mac platform precisely because it does NOT interoperate well with other applications.
Mac users use msoffice because nothing else is as compatible with the windows version of office, and even then the compatibility is nowhere near as good as it should be, even differing versions on the same platform have unreasonably poor compatibility.
If msoffice used open formats, you can be sure there would be many more competitors which could open the files, and marketshare of msoffice in it's current state would be very small.. Altho, i'm sure if they had competition, ms would actually improve their products in a half-assed effort to compete.
OSX is perfectly useable. For someone who has no previous experience with computers, they will pick up OSX much faster than windows. The only people who consider OSX to be hard, are people who learnt how to do things in windows by repetition (the way microsoft encourages, the same way you teach an animal) and complain that things are different.
Other than that, things in OSX make a lot more sense than windows
Also some of us are really heavy multitaskers... I have many apps open and setup just the way i like them on 10 virtual workspaces. I have ssh logins active to several other machines, i have multiple firefox windows open pretty much maxed out with tabs. If i rebooted this machine, i would have to reload all the apps i'm running.. that would be a HUGE pain in the ass for me.
I agree completely...
The only reason i have a windows machine here is for games, and yet whenever possible i play games under linux or macosx.
We need a new minimal os designed for games, windows is a terrible platform for games, as are linux and macos.. for comparison purposes, assemble a pc with identical configuration to an xbox, and try running games which also have an xbox port... the xbox version will run MUCH better despite being the same hardware. Why? because there isn't a bloated os wasting your ram and cpu time that would be better spent on the game.
A minimal gaming-only os wouldn't have all the insecure crap windows does, the rpc services which can't be turned off etc, all it needs is a driver layer and a tcp stack, and a simple interface to choose from a list of installed games or install a new one from media. It would also make piracy more difficult, since this gaming-os wouldn't offer features like debuggers or development tools etc.