This app has no real requirement for a 'single window' approach.
Like the GIMP, the ability to have multiple control panels for various aspects and operations on 'output windows' is more of a feature than a limitation in this instance.
I am looking into gtkglarea, and it may be that i end up dropping SDL, but i mainly just wanted to put in my 2c about how well SDL does its job.
I doubt that any good animation program (Maya, Softimage, Lightwave, Houdini, 3DS Max) lacks the necessary numerical precision to do all of this stuff. i.e. you can model at pretty much any scale you like, up to the limits of the floating point data types used to express values in the system.
Using the APIs and scripting languages built into all these tools, you can write your own 'precise' kinematic solver that can evaluate the state of any object in the scene to whatever level of precision you have the time to figure out.
You won't be modelling the entire solar system down to the peturbations on the surface of H20 molecules as they interact with each other in the oceans and atmospheres of the planets concerned, but how much precision do you need for a video presentation?
Regardless of this, any animation, especially where it concerns humanoid characters, is basically a huge kludge to get it to 'look right'.
There are no 'physically accurate' simulation packages capable of 'precisely' modelling the motion of a human within an arbitary environment.There is simply no way to collect, archive, analyse and apply the data that a human's behaviour depends on in any situation to a simple mesh (or even a more complex volumetric 'muscle-based') model of a human..
What your asking for is an animator who is skilled enough to be able to work within well-defined technical constraints to produce an animation that closely matches the available data gathered from the crime scene.
And that has nothing to do with the brand on the side of the box of your CAD package, nor much at all to do with the 'numerical precision' said package offers.
There are simply not many people who can do this kind of work well, and there won't be a computer invented in the next twenty years that can come close to doing this type of work.
And when the computer that can do this is invented, then courtrooms, judges and whining lawyers will all have long since been replaced by computers with a small fraction of the processing ability required to do this particular job.
I am currently developing a Linux app to draw 3D charts and other visualisation elements.
Using SDL, OpenGL and GTK let me get an app up and running, with hardware-accelerated 3D in no time at all.
In this case, the GTK parts of the system are in a separate window - a 'control panel' type thing, and SDL/OpenGL simply handle drawing the 3D window. I'm not sure how well GTK and SDL/OpenGL interoperate when used in the same window.
GTK quite happily interoperates with an SDL event loop, which i use for mouse/keyboard events in the 3D window.
I couldn't be happier with SDL, and i reccommend it highly.
Uh, nope.. a 'voxel' is a point or some higher-dimensional sample of some volume.
Voxels are somtimes thought of as a cubic volume - i.e. the point sample is linearly interpolated in each of the X,Y,Z axes out to some threshold value determined by some means, often the density of that voxel. This is what you are talking about.
However, Voxels are also often represented using a technique called 'spatting', which is indeed, simply drawing a set of (usually semi-transparent) sprites - one per sample, on screen in back-to-front order. This is what the previous poster is talking about.
Voxels can also be represented as isosurfaces based on interpolated density values, vector fields, multiple 2D planes generated by 'slicing' the volume as well as others.
Voxels are certainly not inherently cubic in nature, and stating the only representation of a sampled 3D volume is a set of little cubes is mistaking the definition of a voxel for a rendering method.
Next you'll be telling us that, since art can be produced, manipulated, reproduced and analysed with the aid of computers, that all art is computer art.
Since speech can be produced, manipulated, reproduced and analysed with the aid of computers, that all speech is computer speech.
Since music can be produced, manipulated, reproduced and analysed with the aid of computers, that all music is computer music.
That is just ridiculous. Computers are simply our way of patching our brains to make up for the difficulty most of us have with performing sustained, repetitive calculations. Cept we haven't managed to 'open the source' to our brains and compile in the changes yet, which is why we're fucking around with these dynamically linked modules we call computers.
BSD UNIX just moved onto the desktop, which is pretty cool.
I already run Linux on my iMac, but X doesn't seem to run too well on it, and OSX looks like it might just be worth the trip down to the warez channel.
When they replace my Linux-runnin' P3-500 at work i will look pretty seriously at a GeForce3-equipped G4.
Since most of my software development is done with Java, OpenGL/SDL, and Perl, it seems that this machine will deliver the goods as an affordable 3D workstation.
Plus it runs Lightwave and Photoshop, which means i can finally kick my Windows habit permanently.
I just don't understand how anyone can possibly say this is, in any way, a bad thing for Linux, UNIX, Apple, Sun and least of all the users of the new system.
Running many modern X apps over the network is a pain in the ass anyway.
Many window managers, desktop environments and graphical applications put more strain on X's networked architecture than it can handle, leading to (even more) sluggish performance compared to what you get running apps locally.
Youre better off buying a real PC for less $$$ and running apps remotely from that if you need to, as well as being able to run bandwidth-intensive apps locally.
a) If you made a clone Macintosh, Apple would immediately modify their next OS release/service pack so it couldn't run on the clone machine.
b) The market for Macs isn't exactly huge right now. Its not like the entry-level iMac is hugely expensive, either. Good luck breaking into a tiny market with one dominant manufacturer who isn't afraid of tying you up in frivolous lawsuits to deny you entry.
c) Apple will refuse to license their OS to you. You'd have to ship the machines running Darwin, LinuxPPC or no OS at all. Not the best recipe for a good 'out-of-the-box experience'.
All of these reasons relate to the fact that Apple have a monopoly on the Macintosh platform - understandably, they did invent the thing. They have had it threatened before, and won't be giving it up any time soon.
X is so, so, so very slow compared to Windows/MacOS/BeOS and the like it's near unbelievable.
Windows 98 on a P-200 with the cheapest-ass graphics card you can buy provides a slicker GUI than XFree86 on a P3-500 with a Voodoo 3.
X might be network-aware, but when its unusable over a slower connection than 10Mbps ethernet, who cares? Most people still use 56k modems for remote connectivity, and X is laughably useless in this scenario.
For remote access, Windows Terminal Server/Citrix Metaframe absolutely beats the pants off anything X-based.
As a foundation for a modern desktop computing environment, X is simply inadequate. No clipboard, no drag and drop, slow rendering, terrible font support, bad network performance - The only thing X does well is deny that support for (insert useful feature here) belongs in X at all.
I run Linux/X both at home and at work, mainly because i much prefer programming on *NIX, and in my opinion, X should be replaced with something that meets the needs of power users of the 21st century, not the needs of university professors of the 70s.
Apple? Hey, and maybe you'll be able to get 'The world's fastest graphics workstation' in the Flower Power colour scheme too.
All of Apples machines are completely outclassed in terms of clockspeed, memory bandwidth, SMP capability, memory capacity, expandability and flexibility, reliability (can you rack mount a macintosh, or order one with a hot-swap power supply?).
Sure, the G4 is a fast chip, and Altivec is interesting only because its puzzling why you would bother hooking such a fast vector unit up to such a slow memory system.
The G4 certainly has potential, but I very much doubt you'll be seeing anyone who currently depends on either SGI or x86 hardware to move to the Macintosh until MacOS X has proven itself up to the task, and Apple has either licensed another vendor to produce G4s for the server market, or starts producing servers itself.
You can't run a shop on workstations alone, and Apples track record for interoperability isn't exactly stellar.
Surely a multi-CPU alpha system would make a great Linux box - why would SGI use Intel when the Alpha, clock for clock, kicks almighty ass on the Pentium4. A 1.5 GHz 21264 would almost certainly destroy a P4, but nobody seems to be shipping them outside of Compaq's high-end server department.. So theres no real incentive for the price to come down either.
The 21364 and 21464 sound like monster trucks in a world of SUVs from Intel, and i imagine they would kick ass when coupled to a fast OpenGL system and an array of U160 disks.
I'm pretty sure i heard that Alphas have special instructions for MPEG encoding too, but i've never really had the chance to do much with an Alpha.
Sure, but you need to use some of the parts from the third engine block to construct the more complex W-16 configuration, which would theoretically provide more usable power than, say, a straight-24.
The Zope site is terrible - trying to find documentation is a nightmare, and trying to find the solutions to what would appear simple problems, like 'how do i use a single, global images folder?' are nowhere to be found in the official docs.
The 'search' facility is brain dead, and it looks to me like nothing has actually been done to the Zope project in the year or so i have been following it, short of bugfixes for the security holes in the product.
Most of the 'Zope Products' indexed on the website are hopelessly out of date and don't work with the current version of Zope.
I have evaluated Zope in the past, and am building a site with it at the moment as an experiment, but I don't think it's a 'Killer App' by any means.
Maybe when it gets a WYSIWYG editor bolted on instead of the TEXTAREA-based editor, and a support site that isn't a total abortion - if theres anything that would put a potential Zope user off, its the Zope site, then they might have something.
Surely this 'virtual-multi-CPU' system can only decrease the sheer number of operations per second a CPU of a given size/speed can do?
The overhead - whether it be in sacrificed MIPS or die area, of distributing instructions among execution units is going to be significant, compared to a maxed-out single core design.
Since reading and writing to various RAM caches are the biggest bottlenecks in the current PC architecture, adding more units is just going to lead to increased contention for these resources.
So many CPU cycles are wasted with the current generation of software that it seems a bit pointless increasing the number of potential instructions you could perform..
Its like putting a 700 cubic inch supercharged W16 engine constructed from 3 straight-8 blocks into a VW Kombi van.
Sure, it'll theoretically go pretty fast, but when its parked by the side of the road 340 days out of the year and only ever driven by a bunch of hippies who are too stoned to see the road properly at 20 kmph, you have to question the thinking behind such a modification.
Personally, i won't install this thing. Just running Mozilla (Konqueror just segfaults on startup for me) uses most of the free RAM on this 128MB P3-500.
However, i'd be interested to know how far the developers have got with regard to improving the speed of Nautilus.
I'm optimistic about Linux as a desktop environment, but we have a long, hard road to travel to get the windowing environment and applications anywhere near the snappiness of Windows.
Re:trying to compile this thing..
on
Low-Bandwidth X
·
· Score: 2
This works great.. i feel dumb now:)
Thanks
trying to compile this thing..
on
Low-Bandwidth X
·
· Score: 1
It says it needs the LZO library..
so i run off to rpmfind.net and install lzo-1.06-1-i386.rpm.
And configure still barfs saying it can't find the library.
liblzo.so.1 and the symlink liblzo.so.1.0.0 are plainly visible in/usr/lib.
Do i need a different library, to install it in a different place, or what?
I'm not a linux newbie, but this kind of thing frustrates the sh*t out of me.. i'm all for source distributions, but this has happened lots of times. Most of the stuff i have compiled builds fine, but theres always the one package you want that just refuses to compile, even though the libraries it wants are supposedly installed.
Can anyone give me a pointer to some resources that explain just how i should go about troubleshooting this type of problem?
From what i hear, and after looking at the buglist on eazels bugzilla server, its pretty obvious that Nautilus has no place on my desktop.
Maybe they'll improve the speed at which it runs, but, IMHO, it will just make the GNOME guys look like dicks when they come out shipping this bloated piece of sh*t in a final product.
'Yeah, this desktop is better than KDE because.. uhh, because.. well, our windows don't open as fast, it might be confusing to the new user'
does anyone know - ballpark figure, how many megabytes of crap i would have to download to upgrade my current GNOME (gnome-config tells me i have gnome-libs 1.0.54, shipped with Mandrake 7.0) to this new one?
You can't put *any* video card in a mac costing less than US$1000.
Youre saying that a 64 bit bus makes no difference to the previous 32 bit/Sun proprietary bus? This is a big improvement over previous Sun offerings.
The point is not that your super-l33t P4-1.7GHz with it's Geforce2UltraMegaloMaxi 1000 running WinME gets a better framerate than a Sun Blade 100 in Quake, the point is that this machine will be attractive to people who don't want a little PC to impress their friends with, but actually want to get real work done on a UNIX platform that has extremely wide adoption within the mid-to-high end server and scientific computing markets.
I'm amazed how hard Sun is pushing into the low-midrange workstation market.
Lets face it, youre always going to be able to get a cheaper machine from an x86 clone vendor, but these new machines from Sun (Netra X1/ Sun Blade 100) would give me a truly high quality and professional UNIX workshop that i could just about afford in my own home.
While i am a big fan of cheap x86 machines - i love putting my own systems together and being able to mix and match parts, I also appreciate the benefits of a complete, high-quality computing package.
The Expert 3DLite accelerator appararently uses a 3DLabs Wildcat 2 GPU, which should provide performance competitive with the GeForce 2 in most benchmarks, as well as whupping its ass in geometry-intensive applications.
The ability to put 2 of these cards in an entry level box is unprecedented. You can't do this with any x86 motherboard i have yet seen - its possible to have multiple AGP slots on the same motherboard, but is obviously too expensive for most mobo vendors to do.
I'd be interested to see what kind of difference the 64 bit PCI bus makes for 3D apps too.
I doubt it will beat the GeForce 3 in Quake3, but hardcore gamers will not even consider these systems.
With Solaris soon-to-be running GNOME, and MacOS X coming soon, i'm really looking forward to seeing some serious UNIX power applied to give Windows some stiff competition in the professional computing market, while bringing many benefits to the free software/open source community.
Linux and FreeBSD will continue to take market share from MS in the server room as the push to take the desktop continues, and as Linux's multimedia and games capability grows, M$ is going to be wondering where to turn next..
Slashdot Mirror
This app has no real requirement for a 'single window' approach.
Like the GIMP, the ability to have multiple control panels for various aspects and operations on 'output windows' is more of a feature than a limitation in this instance.
I am looking into gtkglarea, and it may be that i end up dropping SDL, but i mainly just wanted to put in my 2c about how well SDL does its job.
I doubt that any good animation program (Maya, Softimage, Lightwave, Houdini, 3DS Max) lacks the necessary numerical precision to do all of this stuff. i.e. you can model at pretty much any scale you like, up to the limits of the floating point data types used to express values in the system.
Using the APIs and scripting languages built into all these tools, you can write your own 'precise' kinematic solver that can evaluate the state of any object in the scene to whatever level of precision you have the time to figure out.
You won't be modelling the entire solar system down to the peturbations on the surface of H20 molecules as they interact with each other in the oceans and atmospheres of the planets concerned, but how much precision do you need for a video presentation?
Regardless of this, any animation, especially where it concerns humanoid characters, is basically a huge kludge to get it to 'look right'.
There are no 'physically accurate' simulation packages capable of 'precisely' modelling the motion of a human within an arbitary environment.There is simply no way to collect, archive, analyse and apply the data that a human's behaviour depends on in any situation to a simple mesh (or even a more complex volumetric 'muscle-based') model of a human..
What your asking for is an animator who is skilled enough to be able to work within well-defined technical constraints to produce an animation that closely matches the available data gathered from the crime scene.
And that has nothing to do with the brand on the side of the box of your CAD package, nor much at all to do with the 'numerical precision' said package offers.
There are simply not many people who can do this kind of work well, and there won't be a computer invented in the next twenty years that can come close to doing this type of work.
And when the computer that can do this is invented, then courtrooms, judges and whining lawyers will all have long since been replaced by computers with a small fraction of the processing ability required to do this particular job.
I am currently developing a Linux app to draw 3D charts and other visualisation elements.
Using SDL, OpenGL and GTK let me get an app up and running, with hardware-accelerated 3D in no time at all.
In this case, the GTK parts of the system are in a separate window - a 'control panel' type thing, and SDL/OpenGL simply handle drawing the 3D window. I'm not sure how well GTK and SDL/OpenGL interoperate when used in the same window.
GTK quite happily interoperates with an SDL event loop, which i use for mouse/keyboard events in the 3D window.
I couldn't be happier with SDL, and i reccommend it highly.
Uh, nope.. a 'voxel' is a point or some higher-dimensional sample of some volume.
Voxels are somtimes thought of as a cubic volume - i.e. the point sample is linearly interpolated in each of the X,Y,Z axes out to some threshold value determined by some means, often the density of that voxel. This is what you are talking about.
However, Voxels are also often represented using a technique called 'spatting', which is indeed, simply drawing a set of (usually semi-transparent) sprites - one per sample, on screen in back-to-front order. This is what the previous poster is talking about.
Voxels can also be represented as isosurfaces based on interpolated density values, vector fields, multiple 2D planes generated by 'slicing' the volume as well as others.
Voxels are certainly not inherently cubic in nature, and stating the only representation of a sampled 3D volume is a set of little cubes is mistaking the definition of a voxel for a rendering method.
Next you'll be telling us that, since art can be produced, manipulated, reproduced and analysed with the aid of computers, that all art is computer art.
Since speech can be produced, manipulated, reproduced and analysed with the aid of computers, that all speech is computer speech.
Since music can be produced, manipulated, reproduced and analysed with the aid of computers, that all music is computer music.
That is just ridiculous. Computers are simply our way of patching our brains to make up for the difficulty most of us have with performing sustained, repetitive calculations. Cept we haven't managed to 'open the source' to our brains and compile in the changes yet, which is why we're fucking around with these dynamically linked modules we call computers.
BSD UNIX just moved onto the desktop, which is pretty cool.
I already run Linux on my iMac, but X doesn't seem to run too well on it, and OSX looks like it might just be worth the trip down to the warez channel.
When they replace my Linux-runnin' P3-500 at work i will look pretty seriously at a GeForce3-equipped G4.
Since most of my software development is done with Java, OpenGL/SDL, and Perl, it seems that this machine will deliver the goods as an affordable 3D workstation.
Plus it runs Lightwave and Photoshop, which means i can finally kick my Windows habit permanently.
I just don't understand how anyone can possibly say this is, in any way, a bad thing for Linux, UNIX, Apple, Sun and least of all the users of the new system.
Running many modern X apps over the network is a pain in the ass anyway.
Many window managers, desktop environments and graphical applications put more strain on X's networked architecture than it can handle, leading to (even more) sluggish performance compared to what you get running apps locally.
Youre better off buying a real PC for less $$$ and running apps remotely from that if you need to, as well as being able to run bandwidth-intensive apps locally.
Because:
a) If you made a clone Macintosh, Apple would immediately modify their next OS release/service pack so it couldn't run on the clone machine.
b) The market for Macs isn't exactly huge right now. Its not like the entry-level iMac is hugely expensive, either. Good luck breaking into a tiny market with one dominant manufacturer who isn't afraid of tying you up in frivolous lawsuits to deny you entry.
c) Apple will refuse to license their OS to you. You'd have to ship the machines running Darwin, LinuxPPC or no OS at all. Not the best recipe for a good 'out-of-the-box experience'.
All of these reasons relate to the fact that Apple have a monopoly on the Macintosh platform - understandably, they did invent the thing. They have had it threatened before, and won't be giving it up any time soon.
X is so, so, so very slow compared to Windows/MacOS/BeOS and the like it's near unbelievable.
Windows 98 on a P-200 with the cheapest-ass graphics card you can buy provides a slicker GUI than XFree86 on a P3-500 with a Voodoo 3.
X might be network-aware, but when its unusable over a slower connection than 10Mbps ethernet, who cares? Most people still use 56k modems for remote connectivity, and X is laughably useless in this scenario.
For remote access, Windows Terminal Server/Citrix Metaframe absolutely beats the pants off anything X-based.
As a foundation for a modern desktop computing environment, X is simply inadequate. No clipboard, no drag and drop, slow rendering, terrible font support, bad network performance - The only thing X does well is deny that support for (insert useful feature here) belongs in X at all.
I run Linux/X both at home and at work, mainly because i much prefer programming on *NIX, and in my opinion, X should be replaced with something that meets the needs of power users of the 21st century, not the needs of university professors of the 70s.
I agree that SSL certificates are too expensive.
Personally, i don't give a rats ass about the 'Certification' aspect, i just want to be able to secure my web traffic in a user-friendly way.
It'll all be fun and games till we find out that Verisign promptly sends every key registered with them to the NSA for monitoring.
Apple? Hey, and maybe you'll be able to get 'The world's fastest graphics workstation' in the Flower Power colour scheme too.
All of Apples machines are completely outclassed in terms of clockspeed, memory bandwidth, SMP capability, memory capacity, expandability and flexibility, reliability (can you rack mount a macintosh, or order one with a hot-swap power supply?).
Sure, the G4 is a fast chip, and Altivec is interesting only because its puzzling why you would bother hooking such a fast vector unit up to such a slow memory system.
The G4 certainly has potential, but I very much doubt you'll be seeing anyone who currently depends on either SGI or x86 hardware to move to the Macintosh until MacOS X has proven itself up to the task, and Apple has either licensed another vendor to produce G4s for the server market, or starts producing servers itself.
You can't run a shop on workstations alone, and Apples track record for interoperability isn't exactly stellar.
Surely a multi-CPU alpha system would make a great Linux box - why would SGI use Intel when the Alpha, clock for clock, kicks almighty ass on the Pentium4. A 1.5 GHz 21264 would almost certainly destroy a P4, but nobody seems to be shipping them outside of Compaq's high-end server department.. So theres no real incentive for the price to come down either.
The 21364 and 21464 sound like monster trucks in a world of SUVs from Intel, and i imagine they would kick ass when coupled to a fast OpenGL system and an array of U160 disks.
I'm pretty sure i heard that Alphas have special instructions for MPEG encoding too, but i've never really had the chance to do much with an Alpha.
Sure, but you need to use some of the parts from the third engine block to construct the more complex W-16 configuration, which would theoretically provide more usable power than, say, a straight-24.
The Zope site is terrible - trying to find documentation is a nightmare, and trying to find the solutions to what would appear simple problems, like 'how do i use a single, global images folder?' are nowhere to be found in the official docs.
The 'search' facility is brain dead, and it looks to me like nothing has actually been done to the Zope project in the year or so i have been following it, short of bugfixes for the security holes in the product.
Most of the 'Zope Products' indexed on the website are hopelessly out of date and don't work with the current version of Zope.
I have evaluated Zope in the past, and am building a site with it at the moment as an experiment, but I don't think it's a 'Killer App' by any means.
Maybe when it gets a WYSIWYG editor bolted on instead of the TEXTAREA-based editor, and a support site that isn't a total abortion - if theres anything that would put a potential Zope user off, its the Zope site, then they might have something.
Surely this 'virtual-multi-CPU' system can only decrease the sheer number of operations per second a CPU of a given size/speed can do?
The overhead - whether it be in sacrificed MIPS or die area, of distributing instructions among execution units is going to be significant, compared to a maxed-out single core design.
Since reading and writing to various RAM caches are the biggest bottlenecks in the current PC architecture, adding more units is just going to lead to increased contention for these resources.
So many CPU cycles are wasted with the current generation of software that it seems a bit pointless increasing the number of potential instructions you could perform..
Its like putting a 700 cubic inch supercharged W16 engine constructed from 3 straight-8 blocks into a VW Kombi van.
Sure, it'll theoretically go pretty fast, but when its parked by the side of the road 340 days out of the year and only ever driven by a bunch of hippies who are too stoned to see the road properly at 20 kmph, you have to question the thinking behind such a modification.
Personally, i won't install this thing. Just running Mozilla (Konqueror just segfaults on startup for me) uses most of the free RAM on this 128MB P3-500.
However, i'd be interested to know how far the developers have got with regard to improving the speed of Nautilus.
I'm optimistic about Linux as a desktop environment, but we have a long, hard road to travel to get the windowing environment and applications anywhere near the snappiness of Windows.
This works great.. i feel dumb now :)
Thanks
It says it needs the LZO library..
/usr/lib.
so i run off to rpmfind.net and install lzo-1.06-1-i386.rpm.
And configure still barfs saying it can't find the library.
liblzo.so.1 and the symlink liblzo.so.1.0.0 are plainly visible in
Do i need a different library, to install it in a different place, or what?
I'm not a linux newbie, but this kind of thing frustrates the sh*t out of me.. i'm all for source distributions, but this has happened lots of times. Most of the stuff i have compiled builds fine, but theres always the one package you want that just refuses to compile, even though the libraries it wants are supposedly installed.
Can anyone give me a pointer to some resources that explain just how i should go about troubleshooting this type of problem?
Any IRC bot that uses DCC to transfer files is doing exactly what you describe, and have been around far longer than Napster.
Just another example of MS trying to take what is an excellent API, and turn it into something that only they can control.
DirectX and OpenGL both seem to have gotten along just fine on their own, and i for one am glad that SGI dropped Farenheit.
From what i hear, and after looking at the buglist on eazels bugzilla server, its pretty obvious that Nautilus has no place on my desktop.
Maybe they'll improve the speed at which it runs, but, IMHO, it will just make the GNOME guys look like dicks when they come out shipping this bloated piece of sh*t in a final product.
'Yeah, this desktop is better than KDE because.. uhh, because.. well, our windows don't open as fast, it might be confusing to the new user'
does anyone know - ballpark figure, how many megabytes of crap i would have to download to upgrade my current GNOME (gnome-config tells me i have gnome-libs 1.0.54, shipped with Mandrake 7.0) to this new one?
You can't put *any* video card in a mac costing less than US$1000.
Youre saying that a 64 bit bus makes no difference to the previous 32 bit/Sun proprietary bus? This is a big improvement over previous Sun offerings.
The point is not that your super-l33t P4-1.7GHz with it's Geforce2UltraMegaloMaxi 1000 running WinME gets a better framerate than a Sun Blade 100 in Quake, the point is that this machine will be attractive to people who don't want a little PC to impress their friends with, but actually want to get real work done on a UNIX platform that has extremely wide adoption within the mid-to-high end server and scientific computing markets.
I'm amazed how hard Sun is pushing into the low-midrange workstation market.
Lets face it, youre always going to be able to get a cheaper machine from an x86 clone vendor, but these new machines from Sun (Netra X1/ Sun Blade 100) would give me a truly high quality and professional UNIX workshop that i could just about afford in my own home.
While i am a big fan of cheap x86 machines - i love putting my own systems together and being able to mix and match parts, I also appreciate the benefits of a complete, high-quality computing package.
The Expert 3DLite accelerator appararently uses a 3DLabs Wildcat 2 GPU, which should provide performance competitive with the GeForce 2 in most benchmarks, as well as whupping its ass in geometry-intensive applications.
The ability to put 2 of these cards in an entry level box is unprecedented. You can't do this with any x86 motherboard i have yet seen - its possible to have multiple AGP slots on the same motherboard, but is obviously too expensive for most mobo vendors to do.
I'd be interested to see what kind of difference the 64 bit PCI bus makes for 3D apps too.
I doubt it will beat the GeForce 3 in Quake3, but hardcore gamers will not even consider these systems.
With Solaris soon-to-be running GNOME, and MacOS X coming soon, i'm really looking forward to seeing some serious UNIX power applied to give Windows some stiff competition in the professional computing market, while bringing many benefits to the free software/open source community.
Linux and FreeBSD will continue to take market share from MS in the server room as the push to take the desktop continues, and as Linux's multimedia and games capability grows, M$ is going to be wondering where to turn next..
I wonder what IBM has up it's sleeve?
64 MB, which kinda sucks, but i'll slap some more in if necessary