14 ms·

Neither myself or xvector have used IRIX, so descriptors like "streamlined" are not concrete enough. I feel like my i3wm setup is extremely streamlined for ins

by tomxor 6y ago

Neither myself or xvector have used IRIX, so descriptors like "streamlined" are not concrete enough. I feel like my i3wm setup is extremely streamlined for instance.

pantalaimon 6y ago
I think nostalgia is a big factor here. With this you don’t have to lug around an old workstation to experience it.
pjmlp 6y ago
SGI is like Amiga, NeXT, Atari and plenty of other systems, there is only so much that one can put into words, without actually having used one, the reader will never get the whole point of it.
- tomxor 6y ago
  I used to have an Atari ST, i love that little green crappy desktop for irrational reasons, but I wouldn't argue it's more streamlined than my modern setup. That's why I keep Hatari installed... but I don't try to use it as my development environment.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    I used to have an Atari ST, i love that little green crappy desktop for irrational reasons Didn't the ST run GEM? Now that I think about it, I believe GEM could run on a bunch of different computers. I'll have to see if I can find a version to install on one of my banger laptops.
    - hakfoo 6y ago
      You can definitely put together a GEM on top of FreeDOS stack. I got some janky 486 laptops for note-taking in university and swapped between that and OS/2 3.0 with its rudimentary pack-in wordprocessor. PC/GEOS would have been even better, but was not readily available at thwe time, as I think it was still a commercial product targeted towards schools using hand-me-down PCs.
    - tomxor 6y ago
      Yes it did, and yes it could, although I never saw it run on anything else - or if I did i didn't recognise it... AFAIU the atari version was a little more capable and a bit more fun than the other versions, due to Apple suing DRI and crippling later versions to comply with Apple's demands, yet somehow Atari was excluded from those demands since they bought rights to the source code for further development so continued with the original concept.
Theodores 6y ago
IRIX 4Dwm was like the Rolls Royce of desktops. It didn't get in the way of what you were trying to do. This was in a time when you only ran one application on your SGI machine, e.g. 3D modelling. Compared to Windows, Sun and other desktops it was just nicer to use. The responsiveness, the cool fonts and the 3D bits with no anti-virus pop ups or other nonsense made it a joy to use. The icons were Susan Kate originals done in vectors before SVG was a thing. Things like the CPU performance monitor were a joy to see and haven't been improved on. Same goes for the screen savers, not that we have them now. There was nothing clunky about the magical desktop and normally your applications were tools that cost tens of thousands. Mere mortals thought they were seeing the future and what a brilliant future that was. The web was going to be VRML 3D in those days but we ended up with 2D bloat. The tools you have shape how you think and SGI just made your thinking creative and imaginative. Everyone else was on Windows which had great apps like MS Office but an SGI machine had none of those civilian programs. IMHO Ubuntu has a desktop that falls short of what SGI had even though it is an environment that doesn't distract in the way that Windows does. How I see it is that you have consumer operating systems such as Windows, ChromeOS and OSX and you have professional operating systems such as what classic UNIX machines had. Linux desktops are in this professional mould.
- abrowne 6y ago
  > The icons were Susan Kate originals done in vectors before SVG was a thing. Susan Kare?
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    Seems like it was Susan Kare. Probably an autocorrect fail, as I had the exact same thing happen to me when I typed her name just now. More information about her work on SGI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7527488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7527488
    - abrowne 6y ago
      Thanks for that link. I couldn't find anything searching her name plus "Silicon Graphics", "SGI" or "IRIX".

by tomxor 6y ago

Neither myself or xvector have used IRIX, so descriptors like "streamlined" are not concrete enough. I feel like my i3wm setup is extremely streamlined for instance.

pantalaimon 6y ago

I think nostalgia is a big factor here. With this you don’t have to lug around an old workstation to experience it.

pjmlp 6y ago

SGI is like Amiga, NeXT, Atari and plenty of other systems, there is only so much that one can put into words, without actually having used one, the reader will never get the whole point of it.

tomxor 6y ago
I used to have an Atari ST, i love that little green crappy desktop for irrational reasons, but I wouldn't argue it's more streamlined than my modern setup. That's why I keep Hatari installed... but I don't try to use it as my development environment.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  I used to have an Atari ST, i love that little green crappy desktop for irrational reasons Didn't the ST run GEM? Now that I think about it, I believe GEM could run on a bunch of different computers. I'll have to see if I can find a version to install on one of my banger laptops.
  - hakfoo 6y ago
    You can definitely put together a GEM on top of FreeDOS stack. I got some janky 486 laptops for note-taking in university and swapped between that and OS/2 3.0 with its rudimentary pack-in wordprocessor. PC/GEOS would have been even better, but was not readily available at thwe time, as I think it was still a commercial product targeted towards schools using hand-me-down PCs.
  - tomxor 6y ago
    Yes it did, and yes it could, although I never saw it run on anything else - or if I did i didn't recognise it... AFAIU the atari version was a little more capable and a bit more fun than the other versions, due to Apple suing DRI and crippling later versions to comply with Apple's demands, yet somehow Atari was excluded from those demands since they bought rights to the source code for further development so continued with the original concept.

Theodores 6y ago

IRIX 4Dwm was like the Rolls Royce of desktops. It didn't get in the way of what you were trying to do. This was in a time when you only ran one application on your SGI machine, e.g. 3D modelling. Compared to Windows, Sun and other desktops it was just nicer to use. The responsiveness, the cool fonts and the 3D bits with no anti-virus pop ups or other nonsense made it a joy to use. The icons were Susan Kate originals done in vectors before SVG was a thing. Things like the CPU performance monitor were a joy to see and haven't been improved on. Same goes for the screen savers, not that we have them now. There was nothing clunky about the magical desktop and normally your applications were tools that cost tens of thousands. Mere mortals thought they were seeing the future and what a brilliant future that was. The web was going to be VRML 3D in those days but we ended up with 2D bloat. The tools you have shape how you think and SGI just made your thinking creative and imaginative. Everyone else was on Windows which had great apps like MS Office but an SGI machine had none of those civilian programs. IMHO Ubuntu has a desktop that falls short of what SGI had even though it is an environment that doesn't distract in the way that Windows does. How I see it is that you have consumer operating systems such as Windows, ChromeOS and OSX and you have professional operating systems such as what classic UNIX machines had. Linux desktops are in this professional mould.

abrowne 6y ago
> The icons were Susan Kate originals done in vectors before SVG was a thing. Susan Kare?
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  Seems like it was Susan Kare. Probably an autocorrect fail, as I had the exact same thing happen to me when I typed her name just now. More information about her work on SGI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7527488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7527488
  - abrowne 6y ago
    Thanks for that link. I couldn't find anything searching her name plus "Silicon Graphics", "SGI" or "IRIX".