[Beowulf] SGI and Sun: In Memoriam

[Geoff Galitz]

>  Hmm... I take issue with "Irix sucked" ... then again I am biased as I 
>  learned Irix right after Unicos and Sunos.  Compared to either of those, 
>  Irix (from a user perspective) definitely did not suck.


I have to agree.  I think IRIX was my fourth UNIX (if you count XENIX as an
UNIX variant).  I was really impressed with how well IRIX was integrated
with the hardware platform.  Of course, that should come with the territory
when you control both the hardware and the software.

In particular I found the UI to impressive, getting good and accurate
information from the hardware and OS about the current state of the system
(something I still wish would improve in Linux), the easy tarball software
install mechanism, easy integration of peripherals...  oh, I could go on.

I also like AIX, actually.  You gotta take these things on their own terms.
I really like the AIX NIM tool, for example.  The downside?  Well...
everything has a downside.  You can't let that get to you.




---------------------------------
Geoff Galitz
Blankenheim NRW, Germany
http://www.galitz.org/
http://german-way.com/blog/