[geeks] Daily Dose of Unix

[Kurt Huhn]

"Chris Byrne" <chris at chrisbyrne.com> wrote:

> I know Solaris the best of any commercial UNIX. I know Ultra 60's pretty
> well, and for equivalent power level the U60 is going to be cheaper, and
> easier to find. I've had an Ultra60 before and I know I like them (other
> than the noise. They are noisy beasts for a workstation).

"Best" depends on who you ask.  I personall am not very fond of it.  I use
it every day out of necessity, but I'd rather use Irix.

> The only major catch on the Octane is the price, and the price of Irix.
> If I'm gonna get an Octance I want dual with MXE, and they're still a
> bit on the high side, plus Irix media aint cheap. 
> 

Huh?!

R10k Octanes are a dime a dozen these days, and you can go to dual R10k for
$modest_num.  MXE is going to be expensive, but ESI+TRAM is reasonable (and
SI+TRAM is dirt cheap, relatively speaking).  To get the same graphics
performance out of a U60 would call for a very large investment of cash,
last I checked.

If you buy the media from SGI, yes.  However, it *can* be found for free -
all you gotta do is ask around.  Find out what the Octane you buy is
licensed for (SGI can tell you based on serial number) and you can install
that, regardless of media source, with no licensing issues or worries.  To
go to a later rev (like 6.4 to 6.5.x) will mean licensing, but nobody really
follows those guidlines anyway.

For what it's worth, running Solaris on a U60 will also cost you licensing
fees, as the U60 is a dual-processor machine and Solaris9 is only free for
single-CPU systems.  If I'm wrong, I'm sure I'll be duly LARTed.

> Oh and binary availability is quite a bit lower than with Solaris, but
> that's not too big a deal.
> 

http://freeware.sgi.com

I believe that qualifies as a "metric assload" of software.  There's more
too, Quake 1/2/3, and...jeez...piles and piles of open-source stuff.

I'd say there's just about the same amount of software available for Irix as
there is for Solaris - and more software available for Irix in the
multimedia world.  The market segments are different, but the amount of
software is at least comparable if not equal.

-- 
Kurt                     
kurt at k-huhn.com