jwp wrote:
I just kind of wandered in here, never having used an SGI workstation. I've been trying to understand the whole SGI and Nekochan thing, but I don't quite "get" it yet. When I was younger, I didn't quite have a broad view of which Unix systems were out there, and so I was mostly aware of Sun, IBM, HP, Compaq, and DEC as some of the main commercial Unix vendors. I saw some SGI workstations, but the ones I saw looked kind of ugly to me, and I assumed they were nothing special. I was kind of surprised then when I found a whole Internet community of people who are SGI workstation enthusiasts, even though SGI hasn't been making those machines for years.
So what gives? Why isn't there similar support for AIX, HP-UX, or Solaris? Is the attraction more in the hardware of the machines and collecting these boxes as a hobby? Or is it the graphics software available that is the big draw? And do more people come to IRIX for the graphics software or for the Unix aspect? Do many people use IRIX only for the traditional Unix type work rather than for 3D modeling, CAD, animation, video, etc.? For example, would many people here write shell scripts on a regular basis, or schedule cron jobs?
SGI had very good integration, a nice user experience, and did something that very few were doing at the time (E&S did it, and several other companies (most of the biggies) popped in for a while and then back out, but few kept it up). For what IBM, HP and Sun was doing most of the time computers were pretty interchangeable. They also have the cool factor for people who remember the '90s and late '80s. From a equipment availability standpoint, one hypotheses could go as follows "SGIs often look different and "cooler" than other generic computers of the time, so they stand out and may be more likely to be picked up rather than tossed".
Add to that the idea of "critical user mass". Nekochan exists, there is a community, therefore people join it and contribute as they learn things. Sun used to have one, but it's falling apart (partially because the bar to entry is a bit higher - Solaris 11 requires newer/more expensive machines and Oracle doesn't necessarily push it to hobbyists anymore). DEC OSes also have a pretty strong community, but it's often not as pretty (PDP-11s have great support on several mailing lists for one).
(single-CM)
