this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] PlanterTree@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 days ago

Interesting how the tiny BSD fraction had a lead over Linux in 1995

[–] tate@lemmy.sdf.org 197 points 6 days ago (12 children)

Ah hahahaha!!!!

Windows! Some dumbass put Windows on a supercomputer!

[–] steal_your_face@lemmy.ml 74 points 6 days ago (2 children)
[–] Allero@lemmy.today 64 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Ironically, even Microsoft uses Linux in its Azure datacenters, iirc

[–] dan@upvote.au 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They use a mixture of Windows and Linux. They do use Linux quite a bit, but they also have a lot of Hyper-V servers.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 6 points 5 days ago

True. Never meant to say they use Linux exclusively; thanks for clarification anyway!

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[–] IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 19 points 6 days ago (5 children)

Good point.

But still, the 30% efficient supercomputer.

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[–] FuryMaker@lemmy.world 47 points 6 days ago

Probably need one, just for the benchmark comparisons.

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[–] grue@lemmy.world 97 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

So basically, everybody switched from expensive UNIX™ to cheap "unix"-in-all-but-trademark-certification once it became feasible, and otherwise nothing has changed in 30 years.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 40 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (6 children)

Except this time the Unix-like took 100% of the market

Was too clear this thing is just better

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[–] synestia@lemmy.ml 19 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I saw the thumbnail and thought this was a map of The Netherlands

[–] superkret@feddit.org 15 points 5 days ago (1 children)

One of the Top 500 supercountries

[–] exu@feditown.com 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)
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[–] menemen@lemmy.ml 36 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Surprised to learn that there were windows based Supercomputers.

[–] Spezi@feddit.org 62 points 5 days ago (7 children)

Those were the basic entry level configurations needed to run Windows Vista with Aero effects.

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[–] Zucca@sopuli.xyz 13 points 5 days ago

"Is your UNIX Linux compatible?"

[–] cbarrick@lemmy.world 50 points 6 days ago (4 children)

So you're telling me that there was a Mac super computer in '05?

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 41 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] spookedintownsville@lemmy.world 19 points 6 days ago

Also known as Big Mac

haha

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[–] whaleross@lemmy.world 54 points 6 days ago (4 children)
[–] superkret@feddit.org 98 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

The Big Mac. 3rd fastest when it was built and also the cheapest, costing only $5.2 million.

[–] whaleross@lemmy.world 37 points 6 days ago (8 children)

Interesting. It's like those data centers that ran on thousands of Xboxes

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[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 20 points 6 days ago (11 children)

Now the real question is what package manager are they using? apt or yum? Lol

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 5 days ago (1 children)

they specifically built it to only use snaps

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[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 15 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They are using pacman obviously :)

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[–] Z3k3@lemmy.world 35 points 6 days ago (2 children)

As someone who worked on designing racks in the super computer space about 10 q5vyrs ago I had no clue windows and mac even tried to entered the space

[–] gerdesj@lemmy.ml 40 points 6 days ago (1 children)

about 10 q5vyrs ago

Have you been distracted and typed a password/PSK in the wrong field 8)

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[–] superkret@feddit.org 25 points 6 days ago (11 children)

There was a time when a bunch of organisations made their own supercomputers by just clustering a lot of regular computers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_X_(supercomputer)

For Windows I couldn't find anything.
If you google "Windows supercomputer", you just get lots of results about Microsoft supercomputers, which of course all run on Linux.

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[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 23 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Wow, that's kind of a lot more Linux than I was expecting, but it also makes sense. Pretty cool tbh.

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[–] Mwa@lemm.ee 17 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Maybe windows is not used in supercomputers often because unix and linux is more flexiable for the cpus they use(Power9,Sparc,etc)

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 6 points 5 days ago

That's certainly a big part of it. When one needs to buy a metric crap load of CPUs, one tends to shop outside the popular defaults.

Another big reason, historically, is that Supercomputers didn't typically have any kind of non-command-line way to interact with them, and Windows needed it.

Until PowerShell and Windows 8, there were still substantial configuration options in Windows that were 100% managed by graphical packages. They could be changed by direct file edits and registry editing, but it added a lot of risk. All of the "did I make a mistake" tools were graphical and so unavailable from command line.

So any version of Windows stripped down enough to run on any super-computer cluster was going to be missing a lot of features, until around 2006.

Since Linux and Unix started as command line operating systems, both already had plenty fully featured options for Supercomputing.

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

More importantly, they can't adapt Windows to their needs.

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[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 14 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (14 children)

Plus Linux doesn't limit you in the number of drives, whereas Windows limits you from A to Z. I read it here.

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