IRIX and Software

While over the years there have been several threads here about the best version of IRIX for different platforms, in the reality of the new post-IRIX supportfolio and the complete non-availability of patches and even the 6.5.22 maintenance release from SGI, what would the brain trust here consider the 'best' version of IRIX for these machines to be?

If I were a new SGI hobbyist and I had just scored an O2 on eBay or at the flea market or on craigslist or wherever, and there was either no hard disk or a blank hard disk, what would my best IRIX option be, assuming several were available? Is it 6.5.22 since that is easily found, and thanks to the internet archive the otherwise difficult to find foundation CD's are available for new installs? Or should someone try to find something later, perhaps even 6.5.30 (even though the CD sets are expensive through eBay and probably not even available through SGI any more)? Are there advantages to 6.5.22 over 6.5.30? (I've heard a few already, but I'd like to see the knowledge pooled given the current IRIX situation, and links to SGI's site are lilkely to not be valid soon enough.......the http://www.sgi.com/products/software/irix/releases/ link, for instance, is no longer useful.

Having said that, if one wanted to get into development, has anyone set up a development environment without using the IRIX Dev Foundation and the MIPSPro compilers using any version of GCC? Specifically, in my case, writing automated tools for pulling audio from audio DATs and stuffing them into properly chunked and named WAV files? I have the compilers that came with 6.5.19 AWE but something more modern would be nice, and the GCC suite is well-tested, if not as optimized.

And I'm well aware that likely the 'best' OS option for the hardware today , if I want to do general things and not 'IRIX-y' things like pulling audio from DAT, is the latest OpenBSD, but that's not IRIX.....

rosmaniac wrote: has anyone set up a development environment without using the IRIX Dev Foundation

that won't work. even for gcc or whatever other compiler you need the basic dev stuff for the os which would be the dev cds except for the actual mipspro.

the GCC suite is well-tested, if not as optimized.

it's neither as recent tests from some guys here including myself have shown. if you have a mipspro stick to that.

if I want to do general things and not 'IRIX-y' things like pulling audio from DAT, is the latest OpenBSD, but that's not IRIX.....

no point in running something on an sgi that runs way better on x86. that aside with anything but irix you can run nothing that was made for irix which is the very point of an sgi ... you get the point, without irix an sgi is just an old box.

as for your actual question, with an o2 you can only choose between 6.3 and 6.5.x so unless there's something special you have that requires 6.3 the answer is quite obvious

foetz wrote: [ setting up a dev suite without the IDF ] won't work. even for gcc or whatever other compiler you need the basic dev stuff for the os which would be the dev cds except for the actual mipspro.

First, I appreciate the response, and all that you have done for the community here over the years.

My starting point is 6.5.19 AWE, so I do have the IDF and associated items (MIPSPro C and F77 7.2 along with the 7.2.1.3m maintenance release. But I see here that building Nekoware packages at least needs 7.4? (not that I'm planning yet on anything like that; but I did build PostgreSQL RPMs for Red Hat-ish distributions for 5 years long ago)...)...

the GCC suite is well-tested, if not as optimized.

it's neither as recent tests from some guys here including myself have shown. if you have a mipspro stick to that.

Is that just GCC for IRIX, or GCC in general? I'll look for the threads....

if I want to do general things and not 'IRIX-y' things ....

no point in running something on an sgi that runs way better on x86. that aside with anything but irix you can run nothing that was made for irix which is the very point of an sgi ... you get the point, without irix an sgi is just an old box.

Exactly.

as for your actual question, with an o2 you can only choose between 6.3 and 6.5.x so unless there's something special you have that requires 6.3 the answer is quite obvious

I was meaning something in 6.5.x, and I should have mentioned that in my post..... my bad. It seems the consensus of previous threads was that 6.5.21 was the one to have, with .22 a close second.

Thanks for the information!

rosmaniac wrote: It seems the consensus of previous threads was that 6.5.21 was the one to have, with .22 a close second.

Yes and no. A lot of people (including me) quite happily run their O2s with 6.5.30, though 6.5.30 is slower than 6.5.22 with certain video and desktop applications. If you're not doing video conversions, it is perfectly reasonable to run 6.5.30.

6.5.21 vs 6.5.22 is trickier. SGI dropped Display PostScript and other tools in 6.5.22 to save on licensing costs. (UPDATE: A little birdy informs me that SGI removed DPS from IRIX as a result of a support decision by Adobe. That's possible, though it is not what the SGI scuttlebutt was back in those days.) A lot of people preferred the older Impressario printing tools over the CUPS tools introduced in 6.5.22. If you are upgrading from an older version of IRIX, it is possible to keep many of the older packages and avoid CUPS by doing a custom installation and being careful about which new tools are selected. That said, I'd wager that many more people, especially those who are new to IRIX, run 6.5.22 instead of 6.5.21.

Since IRIX 6.5.22 is end of the line for all R4K systems and the Indy R5K and Indigo2 R8K/R10K and the Onyx1 and Challenge S/M/L/XL, most people tend to go for that release, and since as mentioned it is easily found, most people have it.

Like josehill mentioned, there are only a few special cases when one would go for 6.5.21: Off the top of my head it's keyboard and mouse support for the O200 linked to a Gigachannel with a SI/SE GFX card, which makes it a working graphics system, be it a noisy one.

rosmaniac wrote: First, I appreciate the response, and all that you have done for the community here over the years.

oh thanks

But I see here that building Nekoware packages at least needs 7.4?

there's no rule as for which version you have to have for compiling stuff as long as it works for you.

Is that just GCC for IRIX, or GCC in general?

i meant for irix but gcc in general has never been a blast. it just was the only free one for quite some time and unfortunately the only option on some systems.

It seems the consensus of previous threads was that 6.5.21 was the one to have, with .22 a close second.

in my experience 21 was the fastest and as mentioned by jose already was the last one shipping with certain things so it's a very good choice.