2 posts tagged “irix”

  With the advent of Linux and OpenOffice, there has been a lot of chatter about whether there is now a viable alternative to Windows in the workplace. It seems that every week there is a new distribution of Linux released (I really should get around to trying out Lycoris on my Vaio at somepoint - I got in on DVDROM when it was released and it's been gathering dust since). With each claiming to be user friendly and to be, most definitely, the distribution of Linux that will, undoubtedly, kill off Windows, what’s the truth of the matter?

 Well, and I am willing to risk the inevitable backlash from the Slashdot fraternity, I don’t really think Linux is the answer to a non-Windows working environment. It’s too unstable and anything that can have its kernel fundamentally altered by any coder who happens to join the fray worries me. Oddly enough, having worked as a software developer, I know that you get enough problems when you have total control of the source code, let alone when every part of it is being constantly tinkered with. Yes, I can install it on a tired old PC and use it as a server, but why would I want my mission-critical server to be a clapped-out PC? No, Linux is a hobbyist OS through and through - people spend ages tinkering with their system to make it work, then uninstall it all and start again with the latest new distribution. I’ll admit that there are a lot of places running Linux webservers, but they are using them in redundant arrays and in huge quantities - you might as well buy an SGI Origin rack system, or a Sun Blade rack - either way you’re still looking at £Lots. By all means run a linux-fuelled cheap PC as your home firewall box, but you could just as easily buy a Macintosh and avoid 90% of all malware and virii anyway - they are mostly designed on Windows boxes to attack Windows boxes.

 Starting way back in 1998, I have tried out a fair few distributions of Linux and none have blown me away - I’ve never experienced the “huge performance benefits” you’re supposed to get in comparison to a bloated Windows install - either I have to strip the system bare in order to get it running fast, or it can bloat out as much as Windows, but at least have all the features of Windows…well, Windows 98, at least. I’ve yet to find one that is intuitive (or successful) at installing on any available hardware and I don’t think that asking a secretary to “run the Sudo command in Bash” is likely to meet with much success. No, it’s not a desktop OS, regardless of what people think - it’s a competent cheap server OS with a lot of issues, but hey, it’s free.

 

 So what can we use as a desktop OS? Well, how about Irix or NeXTStep running on native hardware? Think about this - the hardware once cost thousands of pounds, but can be bought in good condition for trivial sums (hell, for the price of a decent Alienware PC, I can get a full-on rack supercomputer), is built to last and is tied directly to the Unix variant they are running.

 Speaking from experience, you can edit video in real-time, do everything you might wish to do in 3d and even record sound at high quality using older SGI software - in fact, you don’t need anything above an Octane/Octane2 to have surprisingly good performance.

 I use an O2 daily and I love it. I even use a 1992 Indigo Elan once in a while and it’s a joy to work on, provided I’m realistic in what I ask it to do.

 So, assuming that you have a creative workflow running GIMP (there’s no Photoshop on Linux, either, by the way, but there are older versions of Photoshop, Ilustrator and Pagemaker running on Irix) and things like old copies of Flint for video work, with Maya running for your 3d, then what are you going to use for your Office apps?

 Well, you could use AbiWord on Irix for your word-processing needs, but it’s a bit buggy at times (well, it is on my Indigo - it’s rock-solid on my O2) and, besides, you don’t want the secretary using a graphics workstation to type a letter and send an email around the company, so what could you use? Well, why not NeXT?

 

 I know, it sounds crazy, but think about it - it’s Unix, so it networks well with the Silicon Graphics workstations and any large servers you might be running, thus negating the need to have a super-duper hotrod on the desk of the accountant or the office admin. All large databases will be stored centrally on the server anyway, along with any large video files, etc - those would be edited/modelled on the workstations, but rendered and held on the server/render-farm. With that in mind, what you want is something that is network-savvy, easy to use and productive. Good display quality and the ability to read/write .xls, .doc. and .pdf files are about all that is required. I prefer all outgoing documents (contracts, estimates, etc) to be sent as a PDF as it’s not as editable as a Word file, so it’s actually more important that our solution can read MS Office files and create PDFs, but let’s not split hairs. NeXT had the precursors to the iWork suite as native software back in 1992 or so, so there is definitely some good “office” software out there.

  If we have a large customer base, or at least a large pool of people we need to keep data on, we can create a database in something like Sybase and then your NeXT can create custom queries and a front end that could be used for call-data tracking, etc, in minutes, not weeks. You could equip a bespoke solution for your business with less work needed than it would take to create a web-based query/data-entry system to an SQL database. NeXT systems can natively allow more functionality with email than most (if not all) current email clients can manage - you can use fully styled postscript text, embed graphics, attach files wherever you wish and you can also add a voice annotation to your file (or email, or, indeed, any other document created in NeXT’s OS) - something that Outlook can’t manage in 2009. So, we have effective intra-office communication and can move to a central repository of data (NeXT documents can be linked so that changing the master on the server changes the copy that was sent to any recipient on the network as well - an offline CMS, almost), where we can share data, create documents and collaborate seamlessly. Because Unix (and NeXTStep in particular) is designed from the ground up to be a network OS, it means that each machine is only ever a part of the whole, leading to much better collaboration ability than something like Windows which was designed for a PC to operate, which is then cobbled up to speak to another PC, but which sees itself as a separate entity to every other PC. Yes, I can create a shared drive under Windows, but Irix or NeXT would happily let me share processor resources or login remotely without the need for expensive Citrix or VMS solutions. The best analogy I can think of is to think of the much-mooted “cloud computing” but the cloud is your local network and server, instead of the internet. NeXT called it Interpersonal Computing and I think they had it right.

 It’s certainly an experiment I’d like to try out someday.

How an ideal system would work:

Video Editing desk:

O2 (1GB RAM, R12k CPU, 18gb Hard drive) for edit
Origin 200 - dual R12k CPUs, 1-2GB RAM, multiple 72GB HDDs to run the render.

 

3D work desk:
O2 (R10k/R12k CPU, 1GB RAM) or Octane 2 V8 (R12k or above, 1-2GB RAM) for modelling/animation.
Origin 200 - Dual R12k or above CPUs, 2GB RAM, multiple 72 GB HDDs to render.

Ideally, each two or three of these “desks” would be backed up by an Origin 2000 or Onyx 2 IR deskside with at least 4 CPUs and 2GB of RAM - the resources for the Origins/Onyxes would then be served as a cluster, dramatically altering the response times and speeding up the renders. Also, having an Onyx as a deskside workstation means that there can be a huge amount of visual modelling or editing done in real time.

 

At current second-hand prices, I believe I could equip each of the above desks for £500-£1000 at most. A mid-range Dell would top that once you added in a decent graphics card, etc. A deskside Onyx 2 IR might go for £2000, with an Origin 2000 being significantly cheaper (i.e. half the price) - not bad for something that is still a very fast supercomputer and which makes for a bulletproof server. Hell, if you shop around, you could get a full Origin rack (i.e 32 CPUs, etc) for the cost of a decent Alienware gaming PC. I’ve seen them go for peanuts and, in some cases, older systems (Onyx, or R10k Origin) are literally given away by institutions, etc, as they are too expensive to ship for disposal.

 Given the availability of high-end apps at reasonable prices (no more £12,000 licences for Maya!), if I were to start my business over, I’d equip with SGI hardware and scale up as the business progressed. I’d also look at getting the odd NeXTStation (or an old SGI Indy) as email boxes for the admin staff to use. I’d chuck in the odd Powerbook G4 for presentations and Flash development (they are dirt cheap, too) as they run OSX and are thus, transparent to Unix. I am gradually following this ethos at home and I have to say that I find the lack of bluescreens and crashes rather satisfying.

 Ok, I have an admission to make - I’m not the guy who was cool at school. In fact, I’m happy to say that I would have fitted the geek label quite well. I was into wargames, Heavy Metal and computers, even though I did play sport and get out of the house once in a while.
 
 I used to avidly read Personal Computer World, instead of caring about football and I used to dream of owning some of the more exotic hardware in order to pursue my ambitions of being the next Steve Jobs or, more likely, Woz. So, it should come as no surprise that as soon as I started to earn some decent money, I started to indulge myself in my favourite dream machines - those made by Silicon Graphics.

 

 I grew up in an age of DOS, when Windows was no further along than 3.0 (if you were lucky) and when having to know your EMS from your XMS and what to do if your himem.sys didn’t work. I like a good command line, but most of all, I like a good OS. I didn’t get to have much exposure to Unix as a kid, but when I did, I loved it.
 
 Here was a multi-tasking OS that was network-savvy and (usually) stable. In Irix, it also had a user-friendly GUI (hell, if my father can watch a tutorial and be editing videos within five minutes, anyone can use it!). More importantly, it was streamlined to be usable by creative-types. It was PERFECT (ok, not perfect, but near as dammit!). There was, however, a slight downside - the cost. In an age when a 386 PC (with 2mb of RAM, VGA graphics, Adlib-clone sound and 50mb hard drive) cost around £1400, the stunning Silicon Graphics Iris Indigo (even in basic spec 33MHz R3000 form), cost roughly £13000. If you wanted the ultimate workstation (an Iris Crimson), the cost would be measured in the £50,000-£100,000 region.

 

 However, even magazines felt that the Indigo was good value, as it far outclassed contemporary PCs (and, to a lesser extent, Macintosh machines) - it offered 3d, video, multimedia, easy networking and great sound and display quality, not to mention outstripping the desktop PC for number-crunching tasks. It would be the ideal computer for me….aside from the fact that I was a broke teenager and there was no way on God’s Green Earth that my dad was going to stump up the cash for me…so I ended up with a  PC that was fine for what it was, but never really floated my boat…then eventually, I migrated to Macintosh (which is no bad thing).

 

 Speaking of Macintosh, my other object of desire when I was a teenager was another Steve Jobs product - the NeXTStation. I know that a lot of people go insane over the NeXTCube (and, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t turn down a Dimension-board-equipped Turbo Cube), but I always liked the elegance of the NeXTStation - in fact, I rather liked the Pizza-box format for a workstation (later on in life, my love of SGI would be rekindled by a reliable little Indy I used whilst working as a software developer). I liked the Color version (although it had less colours than the Color NeXTCube), as it had a crisp display, was responsive enough to be useful and was truly multi-tasking. Oh, and NeXTStep is like Irix but even simpler to use. If you go to YouTube, take a look at this video and then try to think what PCs were like in 1990. In fact, NeXT was so far ahead of the curve that people are only starting to come to grips with the concept of interpersonal computing now, some eighteen years later. No wonder that OS X is basically NeXTStep with a fancy dress on - all of the tools required to be an internet-savvy, collaborative operating system were there waiting.
 

 Think about it - in 1990, most of us were drooling over Atari STs and Amiga 500s. If you had a PC, it was likely to be a 286, or maybe a 386. Only the über-rich had a 486 to play with. Even by the time NeXT released version 3.0 of its OS, in around 1994, you were still unlikely to have access to a PC with a CPU over 33MHz, or with more than 2MB of RAM. Modems were rare and if you had one for your home computer, you might dial in to a bulletin board to swap some ASCII art, or maybe a demo program (which was going to be less than 720k in size - one floppy disk). But here was NeXT (remember that Tim Berners-Lee basically created the modern internet on one of these boxes), talking about sending a “mail” over the “internet” that contained postscript fonts, embedded images, embedded documents (that could be linked so that they updated on every recipients computer automatically if you changed it), as well as the ability to add voice annotation to the email natively (a feature that is both highly useful and yet to be implemented on any “modern” email client that I am aware of). This sort of thing was not far off of science fiction at that point in time.

 

 

 In fact, aside from the processor speed, I cannot think of a better system for actually setting up an office/business user group - document sharing is easy, single documents can be updated and change on every machine on the network that downloaded it automatically (like an offline CMS, almost), the graphic quality was high and the display crisp, the bundled OS applications were actually useful for getting work done and it offered raw computing ability/versatility with the most complete user interface ever made. Oh, and you could literally create a custom database application in ten minutes using the built-in tools. In fact, even today, I’d be tempted to say that, for most work tasks, a NeXT network (possibly with a quick Sun or SGI server for storage and Web Serving) would be an ideal setup from a workflow point of view - after all, with Windows 7 and Google pushing for “cloud computing”, we are merely revisiting the dumb terminal idea with a Web 2.0 veneer. Or catching up with Interpersonal Computing some 18 years after NeXT created it.
 
 NeXT was a glorious failure - it’s elegant hardware was lovingly made, yet outrageously priced. Or that’s the myth anyway - I think when you look at its competitors - SGI, Sun, etc - it was highly competitive in its pricing ($13995 for a maxed-out NextCube Color Turbo with NextDimension board, etc, was the same area as the lowest-spec SGI Indigo, after all). I think the problem was that all the hype in the press was introducing NeXT as the “new Apple”, which meant people, including the same Press, viewed NeXT through consumer-level glasses, thus vilifying the systems as over-priced when compared to a PC (or even a Macintosh). If you take that with a pinch of salt and look at the usability, the value to business (Unix machines tend to be more reliable and stay in use for longer periods than a PC - Macintosh do similar, but to a lesser extent), etc, they worked out rather favourably. Of course, once the hype tarred NeXT as expensive folly, it meant that there was a lack of popular support for the hardware and it quickly withdrew to software-only, before being bought out by Apple as part of Steve Jobs’ return to the company fold. Having said that, even the latest version of OS X is just an evolution of NeXTStep - in fact it’s quite good fun to watch the old videos and then go and see what features have been updated for OS X and, thus, to guess what’s been left out and what might pop up at a later date (voice annotation in email, anyone?).
 
 As a life-long computer geek (hey, I’m not afraid to admit it), I’ve spent a lot of time and some considerable money collecting the systems I lusted after as a teenager, with a few exceptions (I’m still trying to find/beg an SGI Crimson, an SGI Onyx2 or Origin 2000 and a Macintosh Color Classic, for example), but the one I most look forward to sitting down in front of is the NeXTStation Color Turbo, once I can find one (or if some kind soul gives me one!). It’s a machine that was truly ahead of its time and which I am truly fond of. I just wish it had more exposure that wasn’t biased towards the “Steve Jobs blew a billion dollars on making this and it cost four times what a Macintosh did” side of the story - the truth is that NeXT created an OS that was literally ten years or more ahead of the competition, matched it to elegant hardware that worked well. Ok, the CPUs weren’t so fast, but they were quick enough for a workstation - you’d let your server cluster do any rendering, etc.

 The problem NeXT had with their machines was that people viewed them like Macs or PCs, not as high-end workstation for a Unix cluster. Viewed as part of a collaborative workflow with a central render-farm/server, I think that a 15 year-old NeXTStation would still be a viable machine for DTP, software development or scientific work, for example.
 
 I would love to get a NeXTStation for office use, not to mention for the hell of it, but now I haven’t the spare cash (what with a baby due in the next month) to pay the exorbitant rates asked by some people and I’ve yet to find a kindly soul who wishes to donate one to me. I guess that’s one computer nerd dream that will have to remain unfulfilled for the time being…