Messages in this thread | | | From | "Joshua Buysse" <> | Subject | Re: GGI Project Unhappy On Linux | Date | Sun, 29 Mar 1998 19:59:06 -0600 |
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>> I expect most Linux users will stay with Intel CPUs. There is a price >> imperative for a lot of people... >The Alpha machines are not THAT expensive (relatively, of course). A The >Microway "Screamer 533", 533MHz, 4.3GB Seagate Barracuda UW-SCSI, 8x IDE >CD-ROM, 2MB Matrox Millenium, Adaptec 2940 UW-SCSI, 128MB RAM, 2MB SRAM cache, >4 PCI slots and 2 ISA slots costs $2,995 US (see The Linux Journal, Jan 1998, >p.44). For such a machine the price isn't that high - and I daresay it will >get lower with time.
But, do you want to exclude anybody who happens to buy a sub-US$1000 PC from ever using Linux? Some people do see the light too late, and $2995 is still too much for the average student. If you need a workstation to do your programming classwork on, you've just said that it's cheaper to buy a cheap PC, WinNT or 98, and Microsoft's Visual Studio (Education price, of course) than to buy a machine that can run Linux.
That's plain and simple arrogance.
>> Also, have you noticed that workstation vendors are coming out with >> PCI buses? Alphas already use it. SGI have it as a peripheral bus for >Yes - and that's a good sign. > >> So I expect PCI will become even more popular. In a few years you may >> find that the graphics card market only has two options: >> >> 1) "shitty cards designed for Windows 98" >I really don't think so. The PC (be it Alpha or Intel or whatever) hardware >will get cheaper and even more affordable - and not all of this hardware will >run Windows 98 - especially not the Alphas. And I doubt that they will use >only the high-end video hardware, and that's just because not everyone (or, >perhaps better, not so many people) need such sophisticated graphics.
Economics 101. Sun, SGI, etc will hack drivers for these cards, simply because non-x86 machines are only 8% of the market (from my memory).
Beyond that, just because it's "Designed for Windows XX" does *not* mean that it's impossible to write an X server for it (or a KGI driver, or fbcon... I don't feel that there's enough solid information to decide yet). It just means that it's more difficult in some cases.
GUI accelarators will still have basic functions: put a pixel, put an image, etc. Why wouldn't you be able to use these functions from something other than Windows?
>> 2) high-end graphics/visualisation which costs more than the average >> family car, and specifially costs more than *you* can afford. > >I don't think that this scenario will ever happen. The world isn't black and >white, you can always stay halfway between two points. What you said suggests >that WIndows will totally overtake the PC market - then why bother with Linux >I ask?
I'm not saying that it's better to have cards that don't have text mode, or anything like that. I'm saying that people who have those (broken) cards should not be excluded from using Linux.
Josh buyssej@coffman.umn.edu
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