5 ms·

I'm sure Linux killed off proprietary server OSs. But "workstations" are specifically desktop computers, and Linux on the Desktop is not what took over. There

I'm sure Linux killed off proprietary server OSs. But "workstations" are specifically desktop computers, and Linux on the Desktop is not what took over. There are many reasons for the demise of workstations, mentioned in other posts, but I don't think that Linux was one of them.

bayindirh 6y ago
> ...and Linux on the Desktop is not what took over. Depends on where you look. In academia and scientific computing, the landscape is completely different. Most of the software is written Linux-first. Because it's both easier to move on to clusters and open source philosophy (GPL & MIT licenses) is more prominent than ever. A lot of the cutting edge tools are open source and there's a strange model in some: Software is free, code is open, but for research you need a license. You need to give your license number in your publication otherwise it might get rejected and/or retracted and you'd be fined by the company developing the software. Forking is not feasible since both the software is well known and developing that kind of scientific software is very hard (to put it mildly). Yes, MATLAB works everywhere but, MATLAB is not the peak scientific software. It's generally the base camp where you start. If you want MPI even for local runs, you're in *NIX land, squarely. There are also other interesting software, like Singularity which can run containers as non-privileged users and some software (like OpenFOAM) is also available as a prebuilt container.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  How can the software be free if you need a license for some purposes? Or does it just cost $0?
  - danielheath 6y ago
    "Free for noncommercial use" is a common license for IP outside of software.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    Virtualbox comes with PUEL (Personal Use and Evaluation) license, which makes it free for non-commercial use. Java is (was? still is?) free for non-commercial use only. Even if OpenJDK is present. There were some other software which I was using but, forgot their names (since I don't use them anymore).
    - dcminter 6y ago
      That's not correct. OpenJDK is free for commercial use unless you are using Oracle's binaries. Since there's no difference between OpenJDK and Oracle's JDK these days there's generally no reason to use the Oracle tooling.
      - bayindirh 6y ago
        I wanted to say "Presence of OpenJDK doesn't invalidate licensability of Oracle's JDK" but, not being a native English speaker has its downsides :) IIRC OpenJDK had to change/reimplement some image processing algorithms from Kodak et. al but, I'm not sure whether Oracle is using older closed source libraries or OpenJDK's re-implementation in its version.
        dcminter 6y ago
        Per the following link there are "cosmetic and packaging differences" only as of Java 11: https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-releases-for-java-11-and-later https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-rele...
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      VirtualBox is GPL, that license is for the extension pack that really for most use cases is not necessary.
      - bayindirh 6y ago
        You're right, it's my foggy mind. Core VBox is indeed GPL, it's the extension's license.
berkut 6y ago
> and Linux on the Desktop is not what took over. It did in certain industries like VFX/CG: it used to be SGI workstations running IRIX, now almost all large high-end VFX companies are running Linux on x86, and have been since ~2003 (there were one or two stragglers for a bit, but some companies like DD moved to Linux (and NT for a bit) in the late 90s on x86).
simonh 6y ago
The workstation market (IMHO) had three main pillars. One was vertically integrated solutions, the linked article talks about this, where you would buy the workstation to run the software, or even buy them together as a packaged solution. I used to work for a company that did this called MSI. It developed an application for designing mobile telephone radio networks. You would load up a terrain map, specify the location, height and antenna type of your transmitters, and it would calculate signal strength, interference, traffic capture, etc. we'd sell the software, workstations, backup systems, storage arrays, etc as a turn key system. The second pillar was as development systems for server or mainframe applications. You wanted to be developing on a system with the same architecture and software as the target system. To an extent you can lump in sysadmin workstations into this category. When I was a sysadmin I'd develop scripts on my workstation, and often compile and test open source software on it before deploying it to our environment, such as GhostScript, Apache and early versions of Python. Yep, back then these didn't come along with the OS. The third pillar was academia and scientific institutions, where they were used for analytical work, or to develop custom software needed for particular research projects, or tools needed by the institutions. Most of the vertically integrated ISV stuff moved to Windows, but some such as CAD and VFX is still rooted in Linux. The other two niches, dev workstations and scientific applications, also either went to windows or to Linux. So yes it didn't all go to Linux, but the slices of the pies that didn't got to Windows mostly went to Linux.
heja2009 6y ago
I worked in a big lab of about 100 engineer and scientists in the early 2000s. 2000-2005 more and more high-end SUN workstations were replaced by up-spec Linux machines. Only a handful of mostly CAD SUN workstations stayed. Main reasons were the Linux and GNU development environment slowly overtook the Solaris one in convenience - in the end even the SUNs ran mostly gcc and the whole open source stack. Also getting drivers and (patch) installation was fairly easy for Linux and a major headache with Solaris.
- guenthert 6y ago
  Argh, I just had a flash-back patching the Solaris kernel. Thanks for ruining my day.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
There's a big company in California that that occupies SGI's former offices and they run on Linux workstations. Another one does the same in Sun's former offices.
- jjav 6y ago
  And these symbolize the transition of silicon valley away from tech. Sun & SGI were pure technology companies, the product was tech. Whereas the current inhabitants are both pure advertising companies, who just happen to use tech as part of their operations.
  - hyperdimension 6y ago
    I think that that's very poignant symbolism. It's taken such an ahem incredible journey from such an innovation hotbed (Fairchild Semi/Xerox PARC/Bell Labs) to companies that extract money from eyeballs. That is not to say "real" innovation is not taking place, but I get the sense it's just optimization and refinement of internal processes. Maybe VR or high(er) speed networking, but with all the recent IP lawsuits (a copyright on APIs?!) it seems to me that the collaborative spirit of truly new discovery is gone. To use the cliche, I can't shake the feeling that we've discovered everything already. But what do I know; it all happened before I was even born. I'm just amazed every time I read about all the discovery and experimentation that named it Silicon Valley in the first place.
lizknope 6y ago
It depends on the market. I have been designing semiconductors since 1997. All of the EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools from Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor, and others are written for Unix/X11. Back then everyone had a Sun SPARC or HP PA-RISC on their desk. A few had an IBM RS/6000 or maybe a DEC Alpha. In the server room we had some Sun Enterprise E4000 class machines with 12 CPUs and 16GB RAM. We started using Linux on the desktop as X terminals to the Suns in the closet and got rid of most of our Sun desktops. From around 2002-2012 all of the EDA vendors ported their tools to Linux and we ran them straight on our Linux desktops. For multiple simulation runs we would send those jobs to the server cluster machines through LSF. Since around 2013 the 3 companies I have worked for have used virtual desktop sessions using NX or X2Go running on the remote servers. All of the remote servers run Linux with a GNOME/KDE/XFCE desktop. Then we run the client on whatever machine and OS you want. Disconnect your session at work, go home, reconnect, and you have the exact desktop with everything open just as you left it.

bayindirh 6y ago

> ...and Linux on the Desktop is not what took over. Depends on where you look. In academia and scientific computing, the landscape is completely different. Most of the software is written Linux-first. Because it's both easier to move on to clusters and open source philosophy (GPL & MIT licenses) is more prominent than ever. A lot of the cutting edge tools are open source and there's a strange model in some: Software is free, code is open, but for research you need a license. You need to give your license number in your publication otherwise it might get rejected and/or retracted and you'd be fined by the company developing the software. Forking is not feasible since both the software is well known and developing that kind of scientific software is very hard (to put it mildly). Yes, MATLAB works everywhere but, MATLAB is not the peak scientific software. It's generally the base camp where you start. If you want MPI even for local runs, you're in *NIX land, squarely. There are also other interesting software, like Singularity which can run containers as non-privileged users and some software (like OpenFOAM) is also available as a prebuilt container.

tinus_hn 6y ago
How can the software be free if you need a license for some purposes? Or does it just cost $0?
- danielheath 6y ago
  "Free for noncommercial use" is a common license for IP outside of software.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  Virtualbox comes with PUEL (Personal Use and Evaluation) license, which makes it free for non-commercial use. Java is (was? still is?) free for non-commercial use only. Even if OpenJDK is present. There were some other software which I was using but, forgot their names (since I don't use them anymore).
  - dcminter 6y ago
    That's not correct. OpenJDK is free for commercial use unless you are using Oracle's binaries. Since there's no difference between OpenJDK and Oracle's JDK these days there's generally no reason to use the Oracle tooling.
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      I wanted to say "Presence of OpenJDK doesn't invalidate licensability of Oracle's JDK" but, not being a native English speaker has its downsides :) IIRC OpenJDK had to change/reimplement some image processing algorithms from Kodak et. al but, I'm not sure whether Oracle is using older closed source libraries or OpenJDK's re-implementation in its version.
      - dcminter 6y ago
        Per the following link there are "cosmetic and packaging differences" only as of Java 11: https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-releases-for-java-11-and-later https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/oracle-jdk-rele...
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    VirtualBox is GPL, that license is for the extension pack that really for most use cases is not necessary.
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      You're right, it's my foggy mind. Core VBox is indeed GPL, it's the extension's license.

berkut 6y ago

> and Linux on the Desktop is not what took over. It did in certain industries like VFX/CG: it used to be SGI workstations running IRIX, now almost all large high-end VFX companies are running Linux on x86, and have been since ~2003 (there were one or two stragglers for a bit, but some companies like DD moved to Linux (and NT for a bit) in the late 90s on x86).

simonh 6y ago

The workstation market (IMHO) had three main pillars. One was vertically integrated solutions, the linked article talks about this, where you would buy the workstation to run the software, or even buy them together as a packaged solution. I used to work for a company that did this called MSI. It developed an application for designing mobile telephone radio networks. You would load up a terrain map, specify the location, height and antenna type of your transmitters, and it would calculate signal strength, interference, traffic capture, etc. we'd sell the software, workstations, backup systems, storage arrays, etc as a turn key system. The second pillar was as development systems for server or mainframe applications. You wanted to be developing on a system with the same architecture and software as the target system. To an extent you can lump in sysadmin workstations into this category. When I was a sysadmin I'd develop scripts on my workstation, and often compile and test open source software on it before deploying it to our environment, such as GhostScript, Apache and early versions of Python. Yep, back then these didn't come along with the OS. The third pillar was academia and scientific institutions, where they were used for analytical work, or to develop custom software needed for particular research projects, or tools needed by the institutions. Most of the vertically integrated ISV stuff moved to Windows, but some such as CAD and VFX is still rooted in Linux. The other two niches, dev workstations and scientific applications, also either went to windows or to Linux. So yes it didn't all go to Linux, but the slices of the pies that didn't got to Windows mostly went to Linux.

heja2009 6y ago

I worked in a big lab of about 100 engineer and scientists in the early 2000s. 2000-2005 more and more high-end SUN workstations were replaced by up-spec Linux machines. Only a handful of mostly CAD SUN workstations stayed. Main reasons were the Linux and GNU development environment slowly overtook the Solaris one in convenience - in the end even the SUNs ran mostly gcc and the whole open source stack. Also getting drivers and (patch) installation was fairly easy for Linux and a major headache with Solaris.

guenthert 6y ago
Argh, I just had a flash-back patching the Solaris kernel. Thanks for ruining my day.

srtjstjsj 6y ago

There's a big company in California that that occupies SGI's former offices and they run on Linux workstations. Another one does the same in Sun's former offices.

jjav 6y ago
And these symbolize the transition of silicon valley away from tech. Sun & SGI were pure technology companies, the product was tech. Whereas the current inhabitants are both pure advertising companies, who just happen to use tech as part of their operations.
- hyperdimension 6y ago
  I think that that's very poignant symbolism. It's taken such an ahem incredible journey from such an innovation hotbed (Fairchild Semi/Xerox PARC/Bell Labs) to companies that extract money from eyeballs. That is not to say "real" innovation is not taking place, but I get the sense it's just optimization and refinement of internal processes. Maybe VR or high(er) speed networking, but with all the recent IP lawsuits (a copyright on APIs?!) it seems to me that the collaborative spirit of truly new discovery is gone. To use the cliche, I can't shake the feeling that we've discovered everything already. But what do I know; it all happened before I was even born. I'm just amazed every time I read about all the discovery and experimentation that named it Silicon Valley in the first place.

lizknope 6y ago

It depends on the market. I have been designing semiconductors since 1997. All of the EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools from Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor, and others are written for Unix/X11. Back then everyone had a Sun SPARC or HP PA-RISC on their desk. A few had an IBM RS/6000 or maybe a DEC Alpha. In the server room we had some Sun Enterprise E4000 class machines with 12 CPUs and 16GB RAM. We started using Linux on the desktop as X terminals to the Suns in the closet and got rid of most of our Sun desktops. From around 2002-2012 all of the EDA vendors ported their tools to Linux and we ran them straight on our Linux desktops. For multiple simulation runs we would send those jobs to the server cluster machines through LSF. Since around 2013 the 3 companies I have worked for have used virtual desktop sessions using NX or X2Go running on the remote servers. All of the remote servers run Linux with a GNOME/KDE/XFCE desktop. Then we run the client on whatever machine and OS you want. Disconnect your session at work, go home, reconnect, and you have the exact desktop with everything open just as you left it.