Subject: Re: Getting X on Linux/SGI

From: [email-masked] (Larry McVoy)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 16:16:34 -0700

: On Wed, 18 Jun 1997, Christopher W. Carlson wrote:
: >                            SGI is a hardware company!  It surprises me
: > that much of our company has forgotten that.
: 
: If it was ever true, it's certainly not true any longer.  SGI is
: a systems company.  By which I mean that our "edge" over the
: competition comes from a combination of hardware and software
: working very closely together.

We can argue this all day.  It's pointless.

Something that is not pointless, something that the nay-sayers should
take to heart, is that more than 10% of Alpha sales last year were Linux.
I confirmed this with Digital this morning - the number is somewhere
between 25 and 30 thousand Alphas running Linux.

Add to that the 4-6 million PCs running Linux and you start to have
a story.

Add to that the 19 million embedded MIPS chips and you start to ask
yourself why we aren't more serious about this market.

So, while we could sit around and argue with those who disagree, I say
that there is more than enough evidence that there is a market there.
If there's a market, we do it.  That's the SGI way.

---

From: Nigel Gamble <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 16:42:37 -0700 (PDT)

> We can argue this all day.  It's pointless.

Who is arguing?  I'm just trying to point out that belittling
the efforts of all the software engineers at SGI is hardly likely
to endear your cause to them.  There are those of us who think
there is a place for both Linux and IRIX (although I know that
you, Larry, are not one of them); so please try to understand
where we are coming from.

Nigel Gamble       "Are we going to push the edge of the envelope, Brain?"
Silicon Graphics   "No, Pinky, but we may get to the sticky part."
[email-masked]
(415) 933-3109

---

From: Ralf Baechle <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 08:40:51 +0200 (MET DST)

> between 25 and 30 thousand Alphas running Linux.

Jon "Maddog" Hall says that the existence of Linux for Alphas helped
Digital to sell more Digital UNIX systems than they would have sold
without Linux.  His explanation is simple.  First Linux pulls their
customers into the UNIX board.  Somewhen the customers have a problem
that cannot be solved by Linux but a Digital UNIX system.  So it's a
logical next step for them to use such a systems.

SGI is mostly in the systems bussines and the market of PC class MIPS
machines is carefully expressed not doing very well, so this does not
100% apply to their situation.  The point is that this not a Linux vs.
IRIX situation.

> yourself why we aren't more serious about this market.

A large fraction of these embedded MIPS chips is able to run Linux from
it's hardware specs.  And I stopped counting the number of companies
that have contaced me about embedded Linux.  I admit that my and probably
most other people's core interest is in "real computers" ...

> If there's a market, we do it.  That's the SGI way.

  Ralf

---

From: "Christopher W. Carlson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 08:46:33 -0700

On Jun 18,  4:42pm, Nigel Gamble wrote:
> Subject: Re: Getting X on Linux/SGI
>-- End of excerpt from Nigel Gamble

Please!  Don't think that I am belittling the software engineers!  I
had no intent on doing that.  I *am* one of them.

My point was that SGI is into making hardware.  That's how it started
and that is still its main focus.  Yes, it is true that our software
is very important because it takes advantage of the proprietary stuff
in the hardware, but the main income for SGI is hardware.  Note in any
press releases and stock holder's documents how much is said about the
wonderful software SGI produces (Alias/Wavefront is still a separate
entity).  You won't find much.

-- 

		Chris Carlson

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