6 ms·

Isn't it strange that the same community (namely, hackers) who claim to hate the Windows monoculture (and embrace alternative desktop platforms like Apple's) se

by rcoder 18y ago

Isn't it strange that the same community (namely, hackers) who claim to hate the Windows monoculture (and embrace alternative desktop platforms like Apple's) seems intrinsically resistant to a server-side stack that isn't based on the cheapest Intel or AMD chips they can find, running the most bog-standard version of Red Hat or Debian. I think it's an unfortunate sign of the times that the commoditization of hardware is threatening to drive one of the last truly innovative hardware vendors out of the server market. Of course, it may all just be karma for the time when Sun workstations more or less killed the arguably much-cooler Lisp Machines way back in the 80s.

wmf 18y ago
Clearly it's not the monoculture that people are opposed to. And if you think it's bad now, wait for the clouds to really kick in.
rbanffy 18y ago
Well... I am quite unlike the community you mentioned. As much as I like Linux, I despise the PC architecture (the clunky x86 is remarkably elegant when compared to the rest of a common PC - I imagine there is even an ISA bus buried inside the chipset) my computers use. I would much rather have a MIPS or ARM or SPARC based notebook instead. Unfortunately, those are not being made mainly because any pc-class computing device must be Windows-compatible. There is hope. Canonical recently announced they have a complete Ubuntu stack compiled for ARM. Maybe someone can make a cheap non-x86 usable desktop or portable computer out of that. As for Lisp machines, it would be very interesting to build one these days. Anyone wants to guess what a Lisp CPU would look like if it could have been done with, say, a 45nm process?
- lallysingh 18y ago
  I'm no fan of x86, but the inside of these chips have kept pretty up-to-date. Also, they're pretty fast. PCI & the Pentium's APIC took out a lot of the old kludgey stuff of the old PC arch. IMHO, a removal of the older 16bit instruction set & 4 more registers would make many of us happy. Maybe Open Firmware :-) Disclaimer: I use a Sun x86 box on my desk, and a mac laptop. So while I'm in x86-land, it's a distinctly different province than many others. Anything else?
Herring 18y ago
Why is it strange? Both windows & apple are also resisting commoditization of software. (For various reasons apple more successfully than microsoft.)
- sutro 18y ago
  By what metric is "Apple more successfully resisting commoditization of software than Microsoft?" Preaching the supremacy of everything Apple to the choir of Hacker News is a good karma-building tactic, but if you want to base your claims on inconvenient truths like software revenues, you'll find that Microsoft is more successfully resisting commoditization of software than every other company on the planet. Apple isn't even in the same ballpark.
  - Herring 18y ago
    I'm no fan of apple, you can look through my comments & see. I was just assuming on a per unit basis & only for the base OS, i suppose. The extra that's paid for apple computers is a lot larger than the $50 or whatever an OEM adds on for windows.

by rcoder 18y ago

wmf 18y ago

Clearly it's not the monoculture that people are opposed to. And if you think it's bad now, wait for the clouds to really kick in.

rbanffy 18y ago

Well... I am quite unlike the community you mentioned. As much as I like Linux, I despise the PC architecture (the clunky x86 is remarkably elegant when compared to the rest of a common PC - I imagine there is even an ISA bus buried inside the chipset) my computers use. I would much rather have a MIPS or ARM or SPARC based notebook instead. Unfortunately, those are not being made mainly because any pc-class computing device must be Windows-compatible. There is hope. Canonical recently announced they have a complete Ubuntu stack compiled for ARM. Maybe someone can make a cheap non-x86 usable desktop or portable computer out of that. As for Lisp machines, it would be very interesting to build one these days. Anyone wants to guess what a Lisp CPU would look like if it could have been done with, say, a 45nm process?

lallysingh 18y ago
I'm no fan of x86, but the inside of these chips have kept pretty up-to-date. Also, they're pretty fast. PCI & the Pentium's APIC took out a lot of the old kludgey stuff of the old PC arch. IMHO, a removal of the older 16bit instruction set & 4 more registers would make many of us happy. Maybe Open Firmware :-) Disclaimer: I use a Sun x86 box on my desk, and a mac laptop. So while I'm in x86-land, it's a distinctly different province than many others. Anything else?

Herring 18y ago

Why is it strange? Both windows & apple are also resisting commoditization of software. (For various reasons apple more successfully than microsoft.)

sutro 18y ago
By what metric is "Apple more successfully resisting commoditization of software than Microsoft?" Preaching the supremacy of everything Apple to the choir of Hacker News is a good karma-building tactic, but if you want to base your claims on inconvenient truths like software revenues, you'll find that Microsoft is more successfully resisting commoditization of software than every other company on the planet. Apple isn't even in the same ballpark.
- Herring 18y ago
  I'm no fan of apple, you can look through my comments & see. I was just assuming on a per unit basis & only for the base OS, i suppose. The extra that's paid for apple computers is a lot larger than the $50 or whatever an OEM adds on for windows.