4 ms·

Interesting that Linux doesn't come up once in the article, and that it is the equally doomed Sun that is perceived as the competitor (and WinNT).

by NoPiece 12y ago

angersock 12y ago
Eh? WinNT had the last laugh over all of them.
- ska 12y ago
  To my recollection, WinNT didn't acquire much of the unix server base at all - that pretty much migrated over to Linux, with the exception of massively parallel machines.
  - dagw 12y ago
    But WinNT did end up taking over most of the workstation market from SGI and Sun.
mturmon 12y ago
At the time, Sun was the competitor in the engineering workstation market. Later on, Sun was itself eaten. There were other bit players: DEC, HP. It used to be well-accepted to drop $18K on a baseline engineering workstation + monitor (1995-98, say -- I just checked an old quote for a Sparc Ultra that sat on my desk). It must be said that the graphics and floating-point performance of those systems well outpaced high-end PCs running Linux.
otterley 12y ago
In 1997 Linux didn't support SMP (multiple CPUs) yet, while Irix (SGI), Solaris (Sun) and Windows NT all did. So it wasn't a good fit at the time for server and high-end workstation installations. Sun had the lion's share of Internet server installations at the time, but Microsoft's IIS was beginning to nip at their heels. Linux was what we played with at home, because it was "close enough" to what we worked on at the office, but didn't require us to spend thousands on hardware.
- camperman 12y ago
  Support for SMP in the kernel was introduced in version 2.0 which was released in June 1996. It wasn't that mature but it was definitely there. It was only by 1999-2000 with version 2.2 improvements and a bunch of consumer-level dual-core boards like the Abit BP6 that Linux SMP really started becoming popular and usable for workstations.
pjmlp 12y ago
In 1997 GNU/Linux distributions were still just something to play at home. The 1.0.9 kernel released in 1995 was the first to support IDE-ATAPI controllers. Only rich people had SCSI at home. To get properly working 2D graphics was a black art in itself, let alone 2D accelerated graphics or any kind of 3D support that could rival Graphics Workstations.
- justincormack 12y ago
  RedHat 5.0 was released in 1997. It was pretty usable, thats pretty much when the university I was at started switching from Sun Xterms to PCs running Linux. There was usable 3D graphics shortly after that.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    The only usable 3D graphics that could compete with graphic workstations, were provided by a company that specialized in supporting specific graphic cards. The company had a name starting by Xi something and I think the cards were still those that you had to pair a 2D with a 3D card.
    - justincormack 12y ago
      Yes indeed. But they were cheap... And worked. We had quite a few. I can't remember the name either. Then Nvidia came along.
      - boyaka 12y ago
        Here's a chart I found while looking for info about the first video cards I used in the late 90s (couldn't find Diamond on it though, besides a mention of merging with S3...): http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/history-tree http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/history-tree I see IXMICRO and MXIC (Macronix) on there.

Interesting that Linux doesn't come up once in the article, and that it is the equally doomed Sun that is perceived as the competitor (and WinNT).

by NoPiece 12y ago

Interesting that Linux doesn't come up once in the article, and that it is the equally doomed Sun that is perceived as the competitor (and WinNT).

angersock 12y ago

Eh? WinNT had the last laugh over all of them.

ska 12y ago
To my recollection, WinNT didn't acquire much of the unix server base at all - that pretty much migrated over to Linux, with the exception of massively parallel machines.
- dagw 12y ago
  But WinNT did end up taking over most of the workstation market from SGI and Sun.

mturmon 12y ago

At the time, Sun was the competitor in the engineering workstation market. Later on, Sun was itself eaten. There were other bit players: DEC, HP. It used to be well-accepted to drop $18K on a baseline engineering workstation + monitor (1995-98, say -- I just checked an old quote for a Sparc Ultra that sat on my desk). It must be said that the graphics and floating-point performance of those systems well outpaced high-end PCs running Linux.

otterley 12y ago

In 1997 Linux didn't support SMP (multiple CPUs) yet, while Irix (SGI), Solaris (Sun) and Windows NT all did. So it wasn't a good fit at the time for server and high-end workstation installations. Sun had the lion's share of Internet server installations at the time, but Microsoft's IIS was beginning to nip at their heels. Linux was what we played with at home, because it was "close enough" to what we worked on at the office, but didn't require us to spend thousands on hardware.

camperman 12y ago
Support for SMP in the kernel was introduced in version 2.0 which was released in June 1996. It wasn't that mature but it was definitely there. It was only by 1999-2000 with version 2.2 improvements and a bunch of consumer-level dual-core boards like the Abit BP6 that Linux SMP really started becoming popular and usable for workstations.

pjmlp 12y ago

In 1997 GNU/Linux distributions were still just something to play at home. The 1.0.9 kernel released in 1995 was the first to support IDE-ATAPI controllers. Only rich people had SCSI at home. To get properly working 2D graphics was a black art in itself, let alone 2D accelerated graphics or any kind of 3D support that could rival Graphics Workstations.

justincormack 12y ago
RedHat 5.0 was released in 1997. It was pretty usable, thats pretty much when the university I was at started switching from Sun Xterms to PCs running Linux. There was usable 3D graphics shortly after that.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  The only usable 3D graphics that could compete with graphic workstations, were provided by a company that specialized in supporting specific graphic cards. The company had a name starting by Xi something and I think the cards were still those that you had to pair a 2D with a 3D card.
  - justincormack 12y ago
    Yes indeed. But they were cheap... And worked. We had quite a few. I can't remember the name either. Then Nvidia came along.
    - boyaka 12y ago
      Here's a chart I found while looking for info about the first video cards I used in the late 90s (couldn't find Diamond on it though, besides a mention of merging with S3...): http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/history-tree http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/history-tree I see IXMICRO and MXIC (Macronix) on there.