Hi all-
> but that's a hardware issue. no reason you couldn't get Linux to
>bang on that hardware. In fact, I'm sure SGI already is doing so.
I think they may have some machines running that, but from what I have
gotten from SGI, they have every intention of keeping IRIX on MIPS and
Linux on Intel. ANd they have been very effective at doing so, witness the
Indigo2's, and their lack of a Linux distro that runs a desktop. I'm sure
there is interest, jsut like any place you have engineers, hell, put two
hardware engineers in a room with two flashlights and some duct tape, and
they'll make a new architecture and have it in production before you get
back from lunch. I see it at my vendors as well, they have the rare
engineer I get to talk to, and he'll have Linux up on his desktop, and
he'll have the product fully functional on Linux with most of the major
bugs out, and then he'll tell me that I can't have it, becasue he's not
allowed to let it out. Kinda like being told tomorrow is Christmas, but
you have to stay in your room.
>-- some people are willing to pay for that extra bit of performance that
big
>iron offers. the question then becomes, what OS will run it? I think that
>Linux will eventually be able to take over a lot of the hardware that
>commercial *nixes run now.
I think I disagree here, you'll always see the vendors get the most out of
the proprietary stuff with their own OSes, and I think this comes from my
ideas about generalization. You can produce something to work in most
places fairly well, or you can produce something that works one place, but
excessively better than anything else. That's what I see in OSes, while
this is not an opinion of the Linux faithful, the vendors seem to always
get better numbers out of their own hardware than "outside" OSes. Now,
Intel is more of a level playing field,a nd being pretty much the default,
Linux does excessively well on Intel in certain instances (many, ok, I said
many). So, I'm not the hardware freak I'd like to be, and I'm not sure
technically why the vendors have such an edge, but from my experience, they
do.
Thanks, and I hope to see responses as to why, or why
not, the vendors are better on thier own turf,
mbutler