Yep, today is the 14th day of my using Linux almost exclusively! go on, congratulate me!! 🙂
The feeling is that I really didn’t miss Windows as much as I thought I would. I have continued in business with only a few set-backs attributed mostly to tinkering with the operating system and its various programs to get it to work how I want it to. After two weeks I think I have now a more-or-less good operating system for my daily work that requires only very few additions in order for it to be complete. Working on any operating system is an evolving process and if you’re like me, you’re never completely happy and will continue to massage it to get it “just so”, then screw it up again and get it back to a production state. Sick I know, but that’s the fun of it, and as I can do it, let me just show off!! What things did I achieve over the last 14 days? Fine tune Red Hat 9 to work the way I want it. This is mostly in the “look and feel” department as well as installing applications which are necessary for my daily life including OpenOffice, Mozilla, XMMS, Evolution, and lastly Ximian Desktop 2. It also took me a while to get my home computer to work nicely with my SGI 1600sw screen, but that’s legacy equipment anyway so I am thrilled that I can use the full resolution. I have found ways to get Mozilla to display fonts nicely so my surfing is more pleasurable. It’s still not as good as on Windows, but I can live with that. I started using The Gimp for my graphics needs instead of Photoshop and have even discovered its availability on Windows! With the use of a little rpm I was able to access my Windows XP Pro local partition and its files, so there is no need to reboot and switch to Windows just to grab a file I save there rather than the server which is what I normally do. I’ve installed the lovely XD2 and am thrilled by it. I love “clean” desktops. So in the end – and this is my experience only – I can continue to use Linux for just about everything. The only reason I would boot into Windows now is for editing videos.
Comments
Lesbian Gnu/Linux
Check out this Linux distribution:
[url=http://www.lesbian.mine.nu/]Lesbian Gnu/Linux[/url]
What’s that? It’s not a [b]real[/b] distribution? Awww!
Re: Lesbian Gnu/Linux
heh… Gateway Timeout! A lot of sites linking to it but there server is dead at the moment!
IBM and G5s
One last note on the G5 processors. (I left another short comment in the G5 thread, incidentally).
IBM has spent 3 billion US dollars on the Fishkill plant for the new PPCs. Is it only for Apple? Hmm. They originally said it was for external clients, but remember they run Linux on the power4 chips for the Enterprise (I believe), do you think IBM might find a use for such a PowerPC in preconfigured Linux desktops, perhaps? AltiVec was put in for Apple, but what if they tweaked a version of Linux to take full advantage? Interesting thought, yes? Even if they don’t, they could fry Dell’s high-end Intel-based Windows servers.
Also, there’s a clear roadmap, it scales to 3Ghz within 12 months, and eventually superceded by a PPC, let’s call it G6, based on the upcoming Power5. The G6 is already on the drawing board!
This chip is serious competition to Intel and AMD whether it runs Macs or IBM Linux servers.
Read [url=http://www.macfixit.com/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20030626104344897&title=Margin+Note%3A+Benchmark+sparring%3B+Intel%27s+reaction+to+the+G5&type=article&order=&pid=3010]this comment[/url].
[url=http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20030626104344897]A curious comment[/url], almost an admission of the G5 having taken the current lead, made to MacFixIt.
Basically, after saying they couldn’t comment on the benchmarks, they referred them to analyst with the Gartner Group. They expected a sceptical response backing Intel, but got this:
[b][i]”These models certainly equal Intel’s advanced 875 platform and should allow Apple to go until 2005 without a major platform refresh”[/i][/b]
the 875 being the chipset in the current top-end P4s.
I’ve been reading a bit on the response to the announcement and the chip, and irrespective ofwhetehr you take the SPEC marks literally or as exaggerated, people are genuinely impressed. The G5 Mac architecture is also given high marks, where many past G4s weren’t. It’s probably the first time that the memory is the bottleneck, not the frontside bus or something else. The old G4s had, I think, 166Mhz, and was slowing them down. It is said Apple have plans for 2Ghz, although rumour, and if the memory at 400Mhz, (DDR, effective 800Mhz) then maybe there’s no advantage until faster RAM is developed. As it is, they can pump more than a DVD’s worth in less than a second!
Is that a Linux server you would consider? (If it had Red Hat and XD2)
Martin 😀
Re(1): Lesbian Gnu/Linux
Funny I can get it. Maybe Bahrainis are particularly interested in this “distribution”? Jamming your Telco’s lines? Or maybe it’s been blocked by them??
It’s a fairly thin parody of the Debian page, but hey… Wouldn’t you like to have the [b]porn-get[/b] tool? 😉
there’s a bunch of links, some to spoof pages, some lead to things like [url=http://www.dekorte.com/Software/OSX/WebGrazer/]WebGraazer[/url], which seems to be a real project for OSX for downloading “Adult Media”. It was gonna happen, a specialised “prOn” browser/viewer!
Martin
Re(1): IBM and G5s
Certainly there’s a lot of controversy over SPEC marks, and many people are waiting for real-world tests. Apple performed some at the presentation, which in certain applications like Photoshop (for the Creative market) and Mathematica (for the academic market) performed very well against the Dells, but being a sales pitch is hardly independent testing, the real proof is in the pudding. Not sure what the proof is doing [i]there[/i], but that’s what they say.
Itaniums, Opterons, SPARCs, MIPS etc are more up-market platforms intended for servers mostly, and I don’t see the PPC970 in that category. IBM already has the Power-series for that. It’s dual-core and has thicker paths, which makes it a little slower as compensation for reliability.
Your typical SGI or Sun workstation is in an entirely different price bracket, there’s a market for more affordable machines. That’s the market Dell, Apple’s arch-enemy, is in. A lot of Linux servers run off typical PCs, not many of the specialist high-end and expensive chips are to be found here. So I see it as a good thing to give cheap Intel boxes some PowerPC competition in the low end. Naturally, high-end technologies start out in extremely pricey high-end technologies – the computer itself started out as huge “big-iron” mainframes needing specialist rooms to run and keep cool, but in time Personal Computers became viable. PCs (including Macs) now has as much power as a Cray supercomputer of a few decades ago. When the G4 first came out, it was the first desktop system (not computer by any means) to break the 1 billion floating point barrier, and hence be restricted for export by the US government, since it was considered a “supercomputer”. NASA tested it, and found it was as powerful as one of their 25-year old $30 million mainframes. 64-bit technology isn’t new either, but it is on the desktop. Itanium is a server chip which can’t run regular Desktop operasting systems, although I understand Microsoft has a special 64-bit version of Windows to run on it. But it still can’t run any of the huge volume of PC software out there. AMD is making a 64-bit processor which IS backwards compatible, like the PPC970, so that’s what it will compete against when it comes out.
It comes down to a price/performance market. Eventually SGI technologies will find its way into Desktops, and through their investment in Linux, it is in software. Macs and PCs could have been a hell of a lot more powerful years ago if they didn’t consider cost a factor.
[i]Martin[/i]
Re(1): IBM and G5s
As noted above, I don’t think they’re in quite the same market, ie price bracket. You would know better the sort of prices asked for your “typical” SGI or Sun workstation.
As for the comment on the other 64-bit chips, I haven’t the foggiest, it’s just an interesting perspective by someone who knows far more about them than I.
[i]Martin[/i]
Re: IBM and G5s
of course I would consider it as a viable platform for Linux if the SPEC marks (although these have always been controversial, the new trend is to take “real world” tests) is as good as they say. I have no doubt that the PPC is a better architecture generally than the P4’s. Being 64-bit alone is worth the investment. Now parallalize the set up and code and you’re on a winner. But then remember that Itanium 2 has already been released and as that is 64-bit too, the comparison should be with Itaniums rather than Pentiums – compare apples to apples (pun intended!)
As for bandwidth, this has always been the thing that drives the cost of a computer up, not the processor nor the memory. For instance, SGI Octane’s (and others from SGI) use a Cross-Bar architecture to achieve the high bandwidth (starting at 1.2GB/s and that was a few YEARS ago!) that compute intensive tasks demand, especially with big data sets like weather and sciesmic interpretation. In fact, sciesmic interpretation has grown from 2D shots to 3D and that generated another factor of magnitude more data than the 2D variety! Just imaging the pipe needed to deliver the huge data to the architecture, memory and CPU! That’s why SGI have done away with the normal concept of buses and went with the Cross-Bar technology.
[Modified by: Mahmood Al-Yousif (mahmood) on June 29, 2003 04:03 AM]
Re: IBM and G5s
Very interesting comments you referred to indeed, but the author of one mocks the IA64 and he might be right in his assumption. I honestly do not have that technical background to judge. But just looking at performance figures of the SGI Altix which comes with up to 64 IA64 I think they are a certainly viable platform. Having IBM’s backing is a boon. Will it last? Of course the chip will last and if the other comment is correct with IBM investigating releasing their systems with the 970 and linux, then Altix will have a good competitor.
I’ve always looked at MIPS as the leader of 64-bit architectures. They have been at it since the 80’s! And all SGI workstations and servers (other than the Altix and some configurations of the Origin 3000) use them. They have not been beaten in any “real-world” and most SPECint/SPECfp benchmarks. You only have to look at the share SGI enjoys in the top 50 HPC sites to agree. Now will 970-powered servers get into that list? Probably, but initially they will not make that big a dent. If business managers traditionally oppose change, scientists would probably hesitate to adopt the 970 on its release. But time will tell.
I wish them well, it will be good to have a new kid on the block!
Celestia
Totally unrelated, but check out this link, I think you could make a blog entry on this toy.
[url=http://www.shatters.net/celestia/index.html]Celestia: A free real-time space simulator[/url], with various addon downloads like spacecraft and the asteroid that nearly hit Earth a while back.
Check out the[url=http://www.shatters.net/celestia/gallery.html] image gallery[/url] too.
It’s a Sourceforge project.
Apart from sourcecode, they have some RPMs, but only for Mandrake or Suse. If you like it, I suppose you could donate Red Hat RPMs.
[i]Martin :)[/i]
[Modified by: Thor (msandersen) on June 30, 2003 11:48 AM]
Microsoft and US Gov’t Wants To Block OpenSource Adoption In Australia
Thought you might be interested in [url=http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,6678922%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html]this article[/url] in The Australian newspaper’s IT section. A bill introduced into the South Austrlian parliament “calls on public authorities to use open source software in preference to proprietary products ‘where practicable’. ”
The Microsoft-backed (front?) and ironically-named Initiative for Software Choice (ISC) seek to stop it with the aid of the US Government (Ah, those campaign funds weren’t wasted. Oh, isn’t Dubya raising funds again for the next term…?) seek to stop it, claiming it “discriminates against US software companies”.
Most State government,s while investigating OSS adoption, are against legislation, which I suppose is fair enough. But in view of the whole US concept of “Free Trade” being a one-way street, where they believe the US should be free to sell into Australia with no restrictions, whereas they put up trade barriers like large tariffs on Australian goods, because powerful lobbyists demand it, this is rather hypocritical. I don’t even know if our involvement in Iraq was enough to prevent the US from stealing our traditional markets there from us, and naturally giving them to US firms – Where’s the “Free Trade” there?
It makes you wonder what force the “Initiative for Software Choice” brings to bear on the 3rd-world countries, whose trade with the US (whom they owe a lot of money) is very important, and threads may make them reconsider.
There’s also a bit of insight into how other States here in Australia seek to help government agencies adopt OpenSource, and they’re watching the progress of the bill.
[url=http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,6678922%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html]Open source trade clash[/url]
In other news:
This, incidentally, is the paper’s writeup on the [url=http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,6666477%5E15309%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html]release of the PowerMac G5s[/url].
Gates on Linux
[url=http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-06-29-gates-linux_x.htm]Bill Gates seems to think[/url] (or tries to make us think) that Linux is a passing fad like OS/2. He also wants you to think that OS/2 was just an IBM operating system, conveniently neglecting to mention that it was developed in partnership with Microsoft, and that Bill screwed them and the developers over. While IBM and all the developers were busy building up OS/2, and Microsoft was busy hyping it as the future of computing etc, in secret they were developing NT and software to run on it, fully intending to stab IBM in the back.
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Speaking of OS/2 and Microsoft’s bid for World Domination, I didn’t realise this, but at the moment all ATMs in the world run OS/2, which even IBM has abandoned, but that is about to change, as Bill gets his claws into that too. NT or XP is to become the new standard, allowing ATMs to run web-based services, like ordering tickets (in India prototypes apparently dispense train tickets at stations), pay bills, and most importantly, new opportunities to push more unwanted crap ads on us. Hooray!
Martin 😀
Sales of Laptops Surpass Desktops
For the first time, [url=http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/07/03/laptop.computer.ap/index.html]sales of laptop computers has exceeded that of desktops[/url] due to an increasing need for mobility in the market.
Guess Steve Jobs was right when he said in January that this was the year of the laptop. Apple has long had a greater market share of laptops than desktops, even in the lean times, and have produced some good machines for their time, so this can only be good for them. The “switch” by some Unix/Linux people to Mac has mainly been on the laptop, understandably, as they work with Unix/Linux servers, and for(commercial) productivity suites, Word etc, as well as hacking shell scripts and programming Java, which is growing in popularity, they increasingly often get a Mac. Apple generally have a better laptop range than the PC world (sure, debatable; Apple’s benchmark is Sony’s Vaios), partly because the Pentiums, having much higher clock cycles, suck up much more power and hence has much shorter battery lives, plus the processors have to be slower, making it a more even match. For the Mac, though, OSX, being Unix-based, is much more hard-drive intensive with swapfiles etc than the old OS, so the battery lives is not as long as it used to be, yet better than PCs I’m told.
Read an article by a Linux guru, using Debian, on how he needed a new laptop and came to the conclusionafter much research, that the best-value hardware was n’t in fact PC hardware, but the iBook. Lot of detail of how he installed it over the wireless network, rebuilt the kernel to account for the unfortunate fact it only has one button, etc. But he claimed it felt like his Apple hardware hada “soul” unlike the PC stuff, because of the sittle finishing touches and attention to detail, like the “heartbeat” (pulsing diode) when it’s asleep. Curiously, Debian also loaded much quicker on it, just like the MacOS was known for, so some of that at least was the hardware.
Martin
adam_baum
Hmm, the current tree of Xaraya is codenamed adam_baum, after the founder who sadly died, is it not? Just noticed that the PostNuke developers are going to [url=http://noc.postnuke.com/forum/forum.php?forum_id=97]codename the 0,8 release adam_baum as well[/url]. Other changes appear to match that of Xaraya, not surprising since they were going there anyway when the split happened, and the Xar team took the 0.8 branch with them.
Martin