Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/22/supercomputers-prefer-linux-a.html
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Computers have no preferences. Machine operators do. And if they are running supercomputers, they probably don’t stand to gain much from this training course.
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maybe, but compared to the typical “boing boing shop” ad this one is a sensible investment
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This ad is an example of what Trump does: Selling by making stuff up that if you didn’t know better, seems plausible. If you ever wonder why he says dumb stuff, just remember: he’s a real-estate salesman.
For this ad, all you need to do is google “why do supercomputers use linux” and you get plenty of answers. None of which I checked mention it’s because of streamlining.
However, unlike Trump, learning Linux is useful and doesn’t need bullshit to convince people of that.
If you need to call it bullshit, then Google “Redhat streamlined” and you’ll see plenty of cause for their use of the term…
You’ll need to be more specific since all I can find is stuff about Redhat administration being streamlined. Which is not the same as the OS being streamlined, making it faster and thus the reason it is used for supercomputers.
No, the reason supercomputers use Linux is that supercomputers are often unique, requiring a custom or modifiable OS to coordinate IO from all the processors. Linux makes that cheap and easy. No per core license fees. No tangle of copyrights to interfere with modifying source code.
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I get that, I wasn’t trying to defend it (“streamlined”) as much as source it. I’m sure the marketing types ran away with the idea to some extent. However, I think that the point they make (“While Linux is incredibly streamlined, that doesn’t make it simple.”) still applies
Although, I will say that in general, Linux IS faster and more suited (IMHO, far and away) for use in any computer, be it “super” or not, and the product being sold here isn’t about selling Linux, it’s about selling classes for administering it.
Redhat was my first Linux (bought a CD in a box at Costco many many moons ago) and my son used it for a science project in his 5th grade elementary school class, creating a website to “survey” people (mostly family & friends). Blew his teacher away. He’s now 32 with skills and working as a IT specialist in a hospital making some serious Tubmans.
Redhat seems to have fallen away from popularity compared to distros I see now but it’s still cool how you can carry what was learned then compared to now in others. Before Redhat, my first similar exposure (circa 1989) was at work, working with an AT&T System V Unix distribution that was pressed into service as a backend file server for a commercial proprietary language product. Many of the things about the foundation of Unix (and later, AIX) I learned there still apply today across all Linux. What other OSes can say that?
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I’ve been a Linux user for 10+ years. That is just a defensive pro-Linux preface to my real comment, which is this:
This colossal Linux package would regularly cost a whopping $3,540, but by getting in on this offer now, the entire collection is priced at a much more reasonable $69.
That level of discount just reveals how much utter BS the original price is, and I don’t care what it is, it makes me very unlikely to want to even consider buying the (fill in the blank).
I guess I am an open source skeptic. Or curmudgeon. Fine line.
Ah, got it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
My first exposure to Linux was a bit unusual. In 1991, I needed to run multiple terminal connections from a PC to the internet for … reasons. I was familiar with Unix, so started asking around on IRC if anyone could point me to a free version of Unix. Some guy I knew gave me a contact to email in Finland. I emailed this contact asking if he would mind giving a copy of the software. The response was about how it wasn’t ready for release, but he could use some help working on it. Would I be interested? I wrote back saying “No thank you, Linus, but good luck with your project.”
Wish I’d saved the email. The software hadn’t even been named Linux yet. But I’ve followed the progress of development since then, regretting not getting in on the ground floor.
I don’t have the inclination to tinker to get it working 100% needed with linux. I got that out of my system in the late 80’s to the 90S with my various and long gone Amiga’s.
If it’s been a while since you tried it you might want to try again. The last decade has seen huge progress for end users (I am not a coder or anything - used to have to tinker quite a bit, hardly ever now). I started with Ubuntu, then went to Mint, then back to Ubuntu - so nothing fancy.
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