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Will the sun ever shine again or will it forever remain obscured by dark clouds? It feels strange that the professional unix workstation has gone the way of th

Will the sun ever shine again or will it forever remain obscured by dark clouds? It feels strange that the professional unix workstation has gone the way of the dodo precisely when many of its genes are triumphant

jacquesm 4y ago
The professional Unix workstation now runs Linux and there are lots of them. I've used SGI and Sun Microsystems hardware (and long before that Apollo, which probably means very little to people today). They were fantastic in their day and the degree of stability that you could get out of those boxes was something that I'd love to have now. But almost all of the functionality with maybe some degraded performance for edge cases (yes, 30 years later...) is now available for free + an old laptop or desktop. If I had the choice between a modern day Irix workstation or Linux I'd most likely pick Linux, but Irix will always have a special place in my heart in that it was the first OS that made me feel like everything was just right and it enabled me rather than limited me at almost every step. Powertools for the mind.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > The professional Unix workstation now runs Linux and there are lots of them. Come on, macOS is Unix certified. Linux is not.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    Who cares about the UNIX certification
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    That may be so. I have a bunch of Apple laptops, the first thing I do when I get a new one is wipe it and install Linux. I couldn't give a rats ass about certification, I need a workstation, and preferably one that is as close as I can get it to what my servers run, not a fashion accessory.
- college_physics 4y ago
  Do it yourself linux workstations with off-the-shelf hardware offer a decent emulation of the 30yr old original but the fair comparison would be with a current design that packs an amount of innovation proportional to the lapsed time. Funny to see that people are so resigned to what is on offer they cant even imagine what really good might look like today.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Without examples your comment is content free.
mpweiher 4y ago
> the professional unix workstation ...runs on your desktop in the shape of macOS (via NeXT) and in your pocket via iOS and on your wrist via watchOS. And Android as well.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Android less so, there is no UNIX exposed to userspace. Also on iOS some POSIX APIs are no longer useful, like the new networking stack.

jacquesm 4y ago

The professional Unix workstation now runs Linux and there are lots of them. I've used SGI and Sun Microsystems hardware (and long before that Apollo, which probably means very little to people today). They were fantastic in their day and the degree of stability that you could get out of those boxes was something that I'd love to have now. But almost all of the functionality with maybe some degraded performance for edge cases (yes, 30 years later...) is now available for free + an old laptop or desktop. If I had the choice between a modern day Irix workstation or Linux I'd most likely pick Linux, but Irix will always have a special place in my heart in that it was the first OS that made me feel like everything was just right and it enabled me rather than limited me at almost every step. Powertools for the mind.

zozbot234 4y ago
> The professional Unix workstation now runs Linux and there are lots of them. Come on, macOS is Unix certified. Linux is not.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  Who cares about the UNIX certification
- jacquesm 4y ago
  That may be so. I have a bunch of Apple laptops, the first thing I do when I get a new one is wipe it and install Linux. I couldn't give a rats ass about certification, I need a workstation, and preferably one that is as close as I can get it to what my servers run, not a fashion accessory.
college_physics 4y ago
Do it yourself linux workstations with off-the-shelf hardware offer a decent emulation of the 30yr old original but the fair comparison would be with a current design that packs an amount of innovation proportional to the lapsed time. Funny to see that people are so resigned to what is on offer they cant even imagine what really good might look like today.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Without examples your comment is content free.

mpweiher 4y ago

> the professional unix workstation ...runs on your desktop in the shape of macOS (via NeXT) and in your pocket via iOS and on your wrist via watchOS. And Android as well.

pjmlp 4y ago
Android less so, there is no UNIX exposed to userspace. Also on iOS some POSIX APIs are no longer useful, like the new networking stack.