On Thu, 19 Aug 1999, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: > Another difference is that now the market is ready for it, while it wasn't in > 1997.
I'm still a fence-sitter on that one. This despite the fact that I would personally like a board with AGP which supports a 750 or Max! CPU. Here's the Moto. angle on how CHRP died (or zombified if you prefer) Moto. took a Starmax which was the first "G3" machine to MacWorld and showed it behind closed doors to industry heavyweights. At the same show, Apple was telling folks that they were working on their "G3" machine. Estimates are that Moto. was 9 months ahead of Apple. Negotiations for licensing of MacOS 8 were in progress already. After the show, a new negotiation team was brought in from Apple and things took quite a turn for the worse. MCG marketing considered options like BeOS and Linux to keep producing the boxes, but as you say the market wasn't ready for that. No MacOS, no sales. Now, we all know Linux can sell hardware today, but can it really sell enough PowerPC hardware when compared to an x86 Linux system? I'm still not convinced since the "killer apps" aren't there to differentiate a PowerPC Linux desktop/server from an x86 Linux desktop/server. In a way, Linux's portability is a curse for non-x86 platforms. With MacOS, PowerPC is differentiated (yes, I know they had MacOS running on x86 but it's not a product). With Linux, everything looks identical...proof being that I cannot really tell if I'm on a x86, m68k, or powerpc Debian box when I rlogining around systems at work...I have all the same packages on each platform. Although folks like ourselves who are PowerPC enthusiasts will be happy to buy one or more boxes based on these boards, it's not clear why these systems will be chosen over a commodity x86 system by the mass Linux hardware market. Here are the possible killer apps for Linux on PowerPC: 1) Mac-on-Linux - Why? Because it's taps the uniqueness of MacOS running on PowerPC. The code is GPLed. I'm working on porting it to PReP systems. It can potentially give any Linux/PPC system the ability to tape commercial/proprietary MacOS apps which is something the mass market people like. Witness how many people keep Windows around for a few things on home x86 Linux boxes. I'm guilty here myself, my wife and I love those cheap greeting card programs. :) 2) PC emulators. There's three right now for MacOS. I've contacted all three makers explaining the current market and potential market for a Linux port. Obviously, that would let people tap in the Windoze and Linux/x86 apps if desired. This is commercial code, but interesting nonetheless. Especially with "Blue <something> Emulator" only running $25. 3) AltiVec enhanced applications. Running the same theme of MacOS being superior for graphics work and DTP, AltiVec enhanced gimp could make PowerPC Linux a superior architecture to x86 for graphic arts. Clustering would also be better with most of the number crunching relying on FP-performance, the 128 bit VPU would be quite useful. I think having even #1 and #2 would be interesting to a lot of people considering that there isn't a good solution for #1 on x86 (unless you count Executor). #3 assumes that when new CHRP boards are made, they will be designed to handle a Max! chip as well. This is likely considering IBM is licensing AltiVec and based on what I've seen, the differences from handling a Max! versus a 750 in a board are so minimal that any board makers design group should be able to handle the changes. Max! is really designed to drop into an existing 750 board...YMMV. Anybody with other ideas? I've been bouncing these thoughts off some Apple and VA folks and I keep coming back to these points. -- Matt Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] This is Linux Country. On a quiet night, you can hear Windows reboot.
