Desktop Relevance

[dsr-mzpnVDyJpH4k7aNtvndDlA at public.gmane.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 01:18:48PM -0400, jkinz-+hffLmS/kj4 at public.gmane.org wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 10:47:32AM -0400, Dan Ritter wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 10:14:10AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> > > 
> > > I recall back in the 90s when Unix vendors decided to halt workstation 
> > > production.  ......
> > 
> > It's odd that he would say this just at the time when it becomes
> > clear that ordinary people can enjoy using Linux desktops...
> 
> Hi Dan,
> I think Jerry is referring to the "purpose designed and built"
> UNIX workstations.  More powerful than the Win-tel-X86 systems
> available at the time, based on "other silicon" (eg non-X86 based
> CPU's, like MIPS, ALPHA, SUN, HP's PA-RISC etc..).

Yes, I got that. I was considering Whitehurst's statement in the
context of Jerry's statements. I didn't say that very well.

> Those machines were not enough more powerful to make up for their,
> (perhaps only perceived), greater cost over cheaper high end Win-tel
> boxes which benefited from greater economies of scale.

Indeed, they were quickly replaced by Linux on x86, at least in
academic realms. Shortly after Virginia Tech was telling
freshmen CS students to buy MIPS workstations for $6K apiece,
$3K PCs had more grunt in everything except floating point
performance.

> So you are right, more and more people are using nice cheap Linux
> desktops, which are a different sort of animal than the UNIX
> workstations of yore**. :-)
> 
> **Yore - The dark ages of computing... 0 CE to 1997 CE.  ;-) 
> 
> Jeff.  (A denizen of the dark ages of computing... )

I used to live there, but not anymore.

-dsr- (but I still feel weird referring to 50GB of free space as
"uncomfortably low")

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You can't defend freedom by getting rid of it.