Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

Agreed. I gave one of the versions (DR3?) a try but it was missing some basic stuff (multiple desktops) that made it a no-go for me. Assuming I didn't simply install it wrong, of course. But if he's going forward with it that is fantastic as my Plan B is using Fvwm with a 4Dwm theme. Not bad, but not nearly as complete.

It would be fantastic if this project could be opensourced. But I seem to remember there were some licensing restrictions? I can't see how SGI would care about the IP in the Indigo Desktop anymore, alas...

R-ten-K wrote: It would be fantastic if this project could be opensourced. But I seem to remember there were some licensing restrictions? I can't see how SGI would care about the IP in the Indigo Desktop anymore, alas...

My understanding as well. IIRC SGI is letting him port their code to Linux ONLY - no idea why they care so much at this point.

maybe because linux is what they run these days?

At one point a few years ago he seemed to think that SGI was going to let him start releasing at least some of the source but apparently that never happened...

vishnu wrote: At one point a few years ago he seemed to think that SGI was going to let him start releasing at least some of the source but apparently that never happened...

If this was true, you'd think they wouldn't mind releasing some hardware documentation on the older systems and their chips, like what's on the Indy, O2, and Octane. I tried contacting SGI support for R14k/R16k docs, and they really didn't know what I was talking about. Instead, they directed me to see what is available on Techpubs.

Kumba wrote: If this was true, you'd think they wouldn't mind releasing some hardware documentation on the older systems and their chips, like what's on the Indy, O2, and Octane. I tried contacting SGI support for R14k/R16k docs, and they really didn't know what I was talking about. Instead, they directed me to see what is available on Techpubs.

Unfortunately, I'm willing to bet a lot of those HW docs are long lost.

R-ten-K wrote:

Kumba wrote: If this was true, you'd think they wouldn't mind releasing some hardware documentation on the older systems and their chips, like what's on the Indy, O2, and Octane. I tried contacting SGI support for R14k/R16k docs, and they really didn't know what I was talking about. Instead, they directed me to see what is available on Techpubs.

Unfortunately, I'm willing to bet a lot of those HW docs are long lost. :cry:

Nothing is ever truly lost. It just waits to be found again.

ledzep wrote: Agreed. I gave one of the versions (DR3?) a try but it was missing some basic stuff (multiple desktops) that made it a no-go for me. Assuming I didn't simply install it wrong, of course. But if he's going forward with it that is fantastic as my Plan B is using Fvwm with a 4Dwm theme. Not bad, but not nearly as complete.

Ah, would you mind telling us which Fvwm theme?

jwp wrote:

ledzep wrote: Agreed. I gave one of the versions (DR3?) a try but it was missing some basic stuff (multiple desktops) that made it a no-go for me. Assuming I didn't simply install it wrong, of course. But if he's going forward with it that is fantastic as my Plan B is using Fvwm with a 4Dwm theme. Not bad, but not nearly as complete.

Ah, would you mind telling us which Fvwm theme?

I believe it was this one -

http://4dwm.lumpiarze.nstrefa.pl/

I think it would work but there are some defaults in Ubuntu that I'd need to change before it would be right. For example, after I installed fvwm and this 4dwm theme I was downloading something through Firefox. You know how there is that little arrow pointing down (top right area of browser window) that shows recent downloads? Well I clicked on something, I think it was a right-click to get to an open the download location option, and it opened the new window as a Gnome themed window browser (can't remember exactly). Anyway, it more or less killed fvwm, what few things I could click on were giving me Gnome versions that I didn't want, I couldn't get back to the SGI style stuff. So that would need to be addressed, who knows what other things would kick out of the 4dwm theme like that.

I ran 5dwm for many years prior to the Maxx Desktop reload (at which point it stopped working under Slackware, and since which point I've been running mwm from Motif-2.1.32, old school, much?). For funzies I just looked in my pix directory and was surprised to see a couple of ancient screenshots, this one's from December 2006:

yeah not bad at first glance. however i looked her up and she definitely has seen better days - like 4Dwm, really. i mean srsly - that thing was acceptable because it was usable enough and sat on top of the (then) only cool unix boxes that didn't just run boring stuff from the depths of some server room. of all the desktop environments available on linux, it wouldn't exactly be my first choice in the year 2014.

GIJoe wrote: ... it wouldn't exactly be my first choice in the year 2014.

What would be ? (Not the girl, the window manager.) Seriously curious ...

GIJoe wrote: yeah not bad at first glance. however i looked her up and she definitely has seen better days

The more I get to know it, the less I like the aging process.

Dried components. Unexpected explosions when you turn the power on. Slow. Can't keep up with what's hot. Feels good just to come close.

haha nice bg. well so if you had that in 2006 i'd like to see your current one

hamei wrote: What would be ? (Not the girl, the window manager.) Seriously curious ...

at the risk of starting a shitstorm in this thread - after looking around a bit i began using gnome 3.10 a few weeks ago as a temporary OSX replacement and grew to like it quite a bit. it did however require a handful of extensions installed to really suit my needs as a tablet-user but now i might actually shed a tear when i get my apple back. still missing a quick desktop search like OSX's spotlight or 'everything' on windows though.
look & feel aside i suppose any of the major modern desktops on linux solves a bunch of problem i've always had with the old school bunch of graphical unix environments even in their prime - inconsistent drag&drop and copy&paste behaviour between applications and shitty file open/save dialogs without folder history or bookmarks and often not even the ability to automatically add the proper file extension.
having access to filemanagers with tabs and all sorts of display modes and quicklook capability to choose from also certainly helps to get stuff done.

GIJoe wrote: ... at the risk of starting a shitstorm ...

No shitstorm intended, was just interested in what you see as better. I don't do that much file manipulation so most of your points are lost on me ...

I miss clicking on an empty space in the desktop to get a popup list of running programs from which you can select. And I could use a better searching system (doesn't xfs have extended attributes, like bfs did ?) And better scaling for high resolution.

But other than that ...

Windows Explorer is a great file manager but really there's no functionality it has, even in Windows 8, that you can't get from a host of Linux or Unix filemanagers, or for that matter even from the 10-years-since-it's-been-updated TkDesk for graciousness sake...

well, after my little foray into linux land i'd say a well integrated quick desktop search engine in the style of spotlight is what linux is lacking - if you can count that as a part of filemanagement. other than that it is more about selecting the filemanager to suit your needs - from the endless list of candidates.
windows explorer functionality seems to be getting downgraded with every new release ever since vista. well, their whole OS is a disjointed thing anyways. that company seemingly can't see the forest for the trees...

edit: there's more to it than functionality tho and that is an area where for me unix/linux lags a bit: look&feel is important. slow redraw of vector icons, frequently stalled desktop. and have you tried selecting/highlighting for rename and moving files around with a wacom pen on an sgi? infuriating.
the gnome desktop i installed is pretty nice overall, has decent customization and is even easy on the eyes but now, being back on the mac at last it's just so noticeable how much more fluid and tuned everything feels.

GIJoe wrote: windows explorer functionality seems to be getting downgraded with every new release ever since vista. well, their whole OS is a disjointed thing anyways.

Unfortunately true. Windows Explorer was never anything amazing, but it used to be a fairly solid, dependable file manager/graphical shell for those of us who didn't need anything fancy. Unfortunately, Microsoft has been trying to progressively dumb it down and turn it into a glorified media-library browser for years now, and ever since Vista they've taken away more and more of the options for getting it back to its sensible old self. Worst of all, they've started changing shit that breaks existing workflows; that's been the last straw that got me to suck it up and have another go at acclimating to Linux after three years of leaving it the hell alone.

It amazes me that a company that built its entire success on a line of operating systems that might at times be buggy, unstable, slow-ass memory hogs but that, when working, just plain work like you fucking expect them to from every previous version could decide to throw all of that out the window and start wrecking its own shit like that. Oy .