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IRIX - what happened to it?

C

cheesehead

Lifer
For the heck of it, I've been looking into getting an old SGI machine, likely an Indigo2. They're none too expensive, can run lots of neat-0 programs, and honestly, I doubt I can find more fun for the $40 I'm likely to spend if I can find one locally.

Having looked at Irix, it appears to be remarkably user-friendly, and very resource efficient compared to "modern" distributions of Linux, especially in reference to the window manager.

It would seem to me that Irix would be an ideal operating system for an ultra-budget PC. Older versions of IRIX (version 4) appear to now be open source, and reasonably fast RISC processors are now very, very cheap. For word processing, internet browsing, and even ripping music a $30-$40 RISC CPU will be more than adequate, and the system could be built very cheaply - after all, since you're writing the OS, you can use whatever hardware you want. (Think Apple and the PowerPC line, except with much cheaper stuff.)

Just a thought, of course, but it's hard to argue with the SGI Indy - it had video input in 1993!
 
SGI went bankrupt. That doesn't help development much.

It's very pretty, especially compared to the other stuff that was on the market in the same time frame. Didn't exactly win people over in terms of stability and support, however.
 
Linux on commodity hardware is what happenned to Irix.

A person involved in 3d graphics or compositing or whatnot could get a x86 computer running Linux at a quarter of the price of a SGI Mips computer and it would be twice as fast.

 
Originally posted by: drag
Linux on commodity hardware is what happenned to Irix.

A person involved in 3d graphics or compositing or whatnot could get a x86 computer running Linux at a quarter of the price of a SGI Mips computer and it would be twice as fast.
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True. However, IRIX ran very nicely on hardware that is today really, really cheap. (As in "it's not too far off from what's in the PlayStation II" cheap.) Because a lot of RISC CPUs are used in consumer electronics and embedded applications, all that's really needed is to set one up with sufficient RAM and a video output.

 
They aren't 'Risc'. They are Mips. 🙂
(which is risc also, but it was funny.)
And it's funny you mentioned PS2, because that is Mips also.

Just because Mips and POWER are both Risc, doesn't mean they are compatable. Irix nowadays would essentially be a toy, especially with Linux and Windows around. It's uninteresting from a commercial stand point and I am sure that SGI has Irix tangled up into all sorts of cross-licensing scemes as is typical with propriatory Unix. A lot of the 'IP' they put into Irix isn't even theirs anymore, they sold off most of their patents for that sort of stuff a while ago in a effort to get more money to boost their Itanium hardware scemes.

Sorry. It's not Linux is a slow-poke or anything like that. It's actually very fast. One of the reasons Irix was fast was because of how closely tied it was to it's hardware.

It's probably not portable like Linux is. The kernel internal design is built around a idealized cpu architecture.. effectively Linux kernels developers choose the most common features that was present on all major computer archectures and designed their kernel around that. Then when they port the kernel to a new platform they more or less translate that computer archecture with some small amount of software abstraction into the idealized one that Linux uses. So the important code they make for x86 desktop will work for POWER server will work for Mips PS2 will work for Arm dual core in a cell phone.

Irix probably isn't like that. It's going to be tailored very closely to those specific computers it's sold on. Porting it would be very expensive, even if the cpu is mostly compatable (which I don't think there are besides SGI's own stuff).

And besides the Linux kernel is suppose to be very fast. It's the userland that slows it down. Were you to port the software Linux uses to Irix, Irix would be just as bloated and require just as much RAM and such.
(plus a modern system with the same features as Vista or Gnome/KDE would be just as bloated pretty much no matter what you do)
 
Originally posted by: drag
They aren't 'Risc'. They are Mips. 🙂
(which is risc also, but it was funny.)
And it's funny you mentioned PS2, because that is Mips also.

Sorry. It's not Linux is a slow-poke or anything like that. It's actually very fast. One of the reasons Irix was fast was because of how closely tied it was to it's hardware.

Irix probably isn't like that. It's going to be tailored very closely to those specific computers it's sold on. Porting it would be very expensive, even if the cpu is mostly compatable (which I don't think there are besides SGI's own stuff).
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Which is EXACTLY what I reccomend.

Imagine a modern replacement for the i-Opener, based on IRIX (as an example.) Build lots and lots and lots of them to push the price low enough that they could be sold at a profit for $250 (remember, this is using cheap parts), and build all of them exactly alike. A group of programmers would, in turn, tweak IRIX to run on the newer RISC processor as well as it did on the old SGI machines, and update the window manager with lots of big, colorful buttons.

The end result would be very similar to the "AOL PC", but better. Viruses would be a non-issue (UNIX is a six-inch-steel wall to Windows' styrofoam door), and while the end result would be limited in functionality, many people only want their PC for Word, iTunes, Internet Explorer, and Pac-Man. All of the above have free open-source equivalents, which could likely be easily ported.

Then again, the same thing could be done using X-FCE or Fluxbox and a bunch of dedicated coders working with Debian or FreeBSD or whatever other variant of Linux they prefer.

Honestly, I'd be willing to pay $30 for a version of Linux that could be used for basic tasks and configuration without headaches (I'd rather just learn the command line instead of KDE's headache-inducing menus) in a similar fashion to OSX - with a nice, easy-to-use tool palette with everthing on it.

While $30 is not much, I'd bet that ten talented coders could write what I'm referring to in six months, and sell tons of copies - there's lots of people who would like to be able to use their old PC, and if they can set it up by putting the CD in the drive and pressing "install", then all the better.

 
Then again, the same thing could be done using X-FCE or Fluxbox and a bunch of dedicated coders working with Debian or FreeBSD or whatever other variant of Linux they prefer.
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And that pretty much kills any chance Irix has of being involved. Even if SGI would give it to you for free (and chances are they couldn't do that legally) you'd have to spend a lot of time, probably years, porting the system to the new hardware. So why go through all of that hassle when you have a better alternative system already?

Honestly, I'd be willing to pay $30 for a version of Linux that could be used for basic tasks and configuration without headaches
Click to expand...

Maybe one of those cheap OLPC laptops would work for you.
 
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