8 Apr
2013
8 Apr
'13
5:56 p.m.
On 9-apr-2013 2:15, Dave McGuire wrote:
Why would anyone want to run an EOL (read: dead) operating
system without even a community left? (Thanks to the PAKs
not being provided any longer.)
Guess what subsequently happened to F/OSS offerings, to make
it even less attractive?
The only people still running Tru64 UNIX, over here at least,
are in the process of moving to emulators and some --- those
daring enough --- moving to HP-UX on HP's miracle denialware
(better known as IPF, a.k.a. IA-64 or... /Itanic/ by some).
I dunno, I had quite a few of them in my
datacenter. They
were very common in my world. Some of them still are.
Why, oh why, would anyone want to run an EOL platform? (Other than
to keep things up and running.)
As I said, which is quoted below, IN THE 1990s.
I was also talking about the present. I know, not your favorite
place to be. Sorry about that.
Dropping a quarter mil on a big server isn't
usually done via
ads in computer magazines.
Are you now denying the existence of such ads? Also, I wouldn't
call (e.g.) an AlphaStation 200, Digital Personal WorkStation or
something else of (roughly) that proportion a "big server".
Are you under some impression that these machines
were intended
for home use by consumers??
I keep forgetting that it's wholly illogical and unreasonable for
people to run systems in their small(er) business environments and,
/gawd forbid/, at home!
You'd be surprised at the amount of things that were ported (think
of F/OSS offerings) to VMS by those evil, non-millionaire, scum
/little people/ you so dearly despise.
It was no easier nor more difficult than building
things on any
other OS.
How about now? Keep this also in mind for the below paragraphs.
Digital/Tru64
UNIX saw quite a bit of usage, especially here.
Many companies and government agencies ran VMS and Tru64 UNIX,
but it's sadly all dead now and gone to Windows and Linux.
ALL of it, huh? *chuckle* ...for the cheap consumer market, and the idiots...
You mean the non-millionaire /little people/?
So, who exactly are the "idiots" now? Tru64 UNIX is dead
now and it has been for many years.
HP didn't even proceed to port off things like TruCluster,
AdvFS, etc. to HP-UX, as they promised in the roadmaps at
the time (around 2003~'05).
Besides, DEC would *give* you OSF/1 if you bought
an
Alpha, in nearly all cases. Once again, you're dead wrong.
Oh, right, that's why nearly everything was bolted down with
PAKs? (Product Activation Keys, in case you may have perhaps
forgotten.)
I didn't work in that world. It was owned by
SGI anyway;
Alphas were never a serious player in that world.
No, they didn't, but they did make some inroads when it came
to raw number crunching; you know, rendering (like I wrote
about earlier).
Those NT AXP systems supposedly outran some SGI IRIX/MIPS
systems at the time. (Note: I'm a huge SGI fan, I also own
a good amount of them and still run them, including a close-
to-max'ed out quad-processor Tezro.)
Here we go again!
So, where is SGI now? Where is (pre-Oracle) Sun now? Where
is SCO now? Where is DEC itself now? Where are all those
HP-UX, AIX, etc. workstations now?
- MG