5 ms·

> wants a bare metal os with just a database > doesn't want to configure it what.

7thaccount 3y ago
Lol crazy sounding right? I work at a large company though, so getting IT approval to run my own ground up Gentoo instance is not ever going to fly. I was just thinking about what other kinds of computing possibilities are...well... possible. And also how much I dislike having this massive Windows API (or whatever) in my way. As an engineer doing simulations, I really just need a workstation with a few primitives that I wouldn't want to build myself such as matrix routines, optimization solvers, graphics primitives, reports, and file I/O. If some company sold a workstation that glued all of that together in something like a modern C64, you'd have something pretty cool. Sure you can just run various apps on a modern OS...but there is just so much garbage going on there that makes it a pain to do your job (also a lot that makes things easier too of course). I guess I'm wishing for something like a dedicated computer that's more like a modern lisp machine or smalltalk Xerox Park machine or something for scientists/engineers. None of this will ever happen of course unless I get a trillion dollars and can setup a team to design the hardware and software. I can prob find a better use for that kind of money too ;) Anyway, just trying to talk about what I think about when I'm cobbling together things. I don't think Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS are very efficient for all needs and it's a bit of a shame when I think of how many scientists are stuck in configuration, software installation, and API hell when what they really need is some kind of super souped-up calculator.
- sgarland 3y ago
  It sounds like what you really want is a Jupyter Notebook, optionally with an RDBMS other than SQLite, and libraries to handle it. Have you considered running a minimal OS in a container? You can mount a persistent data volume to it. Should even work in Windows, assuming you have access to WSL2, although AFAIK you can’t do GPU pass-through if that matters.

Lol crazy sounding right? I work at a large company though, so getting IT approval to run my own ground up Gentoo instance is not ever going to fly. I was just thinking about what other kinds of computing possibilities are...well... possible. And also how much I dislike having this massive Windows API (or whatever) in my way. As an engineer doing simulations, I really just need a workstation with a few primitives that I wouldn't want to build myself such as matrix routines, optimization solvers, graphics primitives, reports, and file I/O. If some company sold a workstation that glued all of that together in something like a modern C64, you'd have something pretty cool. Sure you can just run various apps on a modern OS...but there is just so much garbage going on there that makes it a pain to do your job (also a lot that makes things easier too of course). I guess I'm wishing for something like a dedicated computer that's more like a modern lisp machine or smalltalk Xerox Park machine or something for scientists/engineers. None of this will ever happen of course unless I get a trillion dollars and can setup a team to design the hardware and software. I can prob find a better use for that kind of money too ;) Anyway, just trying to talk about what I think about when I'm cobbling together things. I don't think Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS are very efficient for all needs and it's a bit of a shame when I think of how many scientists are stuck in configuration, software installation, and API hell when what they really need is some kind of super souped-up calculator.

sgarland 3y ago
It sounds like what you really want is a Jupyter Notebook, optionally with an RDBMS other than SQLite, and libraries to handle it. Have you considered running a minimal OS in a container? You can mount a persistent data volume to it. Should even work in Windows, assuming you have access to WSL2, although AFAIK you can’t do GPU pass-through if that matters.