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Operating Systems Linux

Finally, It's the Year of the Linux... Supercomputer (zdnet.com) 171

Posted by msmash from the finally-it's-here dept.
Beeftopia writes: From ZDNet: "The latest TOP500 Supercomputer list is out. What's not surprising is that Linux runs on every last one of the world's fastest supercomputers. Linux has dominated supercomputing for years. But, Linux only took over supercomputing lock, stock, and barrel in November 2017. That was the first time all of the TOP500 machines were running Linux. Before that IBM AIX, a Unix variant, was hanging on for dear life low on the list."

An interesting architectural note: "GPUs, not CPUs, now power most of supercomputers' speed."
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Finally, It's the Year of the Linux... Supercomputer More

Finally, It's the Year of the Linux... Supercomputer

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  • Linus (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @10:32AM (#56853804) Homepage Journal
    Linus has created literally trillions in economic activity. Singlehanded. But techies worship Musk. Very odd.

    • Re:Linus (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Riceballsan ( 816702 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @10:35AM (#56853832)
      Welcome to the world of business. If you want to power the world you can... but if you can look good and speak with charisma you can get more fame regardless of knowledge level. Same reason why Jobs was center stage for so long.
      • Yeah. It is pretty sad if you think of it. Github sold for $7.5 billion. The founder is now a billionaire. He wrote github in 3 months.

        • Re:Linus (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Wookie Monster ( 605020 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @10:53AM (#56853954)
          The Github that sold for $7.5B wasn't the same Github that was created in three months. Hundreds of people, working for ten years made Github worth $7.5B. That initial version wasn't worth any more than the time spent developing it.
          • I'll bet some guy valued the initial version at $50 billion or so. The current version of Github isn't worth $7.5B either. It is just that Microsoft has too much stock and doesn't know what to do with it.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          That's about as stupid as saying the very first version of Linux that Linus released is what drove all of this economic activity. For the GP, what kind of dingbat are you to think that Linus did this singlehandedly? The kernel is the work of a lot of people. This isn't to belittle the impact he has had - it is undoubtedly vast - but I doubt even Linus himself would have the audacity to ever claim he did it without the help of a lot of other people.

    • Most techies appreciate both of them, I'd suppose.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by orlanz ( 882574 )

      Do we even know the name of the guy who invented the wheel?

      • I know his name (Nisaba). But most tire guys only know names like Giovanni Battista Pirelli. I doubt Pirelli even gave Nisaba any credit for his invention.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Do we even know the name of the guy who invented the wheel?

        Wasn't it Al Gore?

      • We do not know the name, but it was not a guy. It was a gal.

        She languished at the encampment, be it hut or cave, as the seasons came and went, and had access to a varying amount of small objects.

        As she laboured in her primitive lab, she had the intelligence, experience, opportunity and motive to experiment with combinations of adaptations and stumbled, early on, upon the idea that rolling was more efficient than dragging or pulling.

        • Noooo. It was a guy! What would a woman who cooked and gathered berries have need for a wheel? It was the MEN that labored all day, rain or shine, cold or hot, to the tops of hills to roll stones down. The stone that rolled furthest was the king of the hill for that day and an aspiration to the youth.

        • We do not know the name, but it was not a guy. It was a gal.

          She languished at the encampment, be it hut or cave, as the seasons came and went, and had access to a varying amount of small objects.

          As she laboured in her primitive lab, she had the intelligence, experience, opportunity and motive to experiment with combinations of adaptations and stumbled, early on, upon the idea that rolling was more efficient than dragging or pulling.

          Was she hot though?

      • Mr. Axel Wheel.

        Using round things such as logs to help move heavy objects by reducing the friction coefficient was used before the wheel. But the invention of the Axel that was fixed which was the true innovation.

        I expect the Axel concept was figured out when moving heavy things for a long time, when the inside gets warn down and a bit more narrow. you were able to push the object further before having to pickup the log and move it to the front. Then they found a point where they can have it narrow enough

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Did Torvalds make a FLAMETHROWER?

      I think not...

      • He also didn't promise to take us all to Mars and offer hyperloop rides for a $1. Disregard my original comment.

      • Exactly.

        And just how hard is it for mankind to make a fucking ball cap?

        That was certainly achieved well before the wheel.

        The brand names proposed above refer to TYRES, not wheels.

        The brand, "Boring," applied to an invention preceding the wheel by millennia, is an idea that's slicker'n deer guts on a door knob.

    • Re:Linus (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @11:19AM (#56854106)

      Linus has created literally trillions in economic activity. Singlehanded. But techies worship Musk. Very odd.

      Singlehanded huh? So he wrote every version of Linux, every fork, every application, and every improvement was his idea?

      He is obviously the guy who kicked it all off, but to say he did it all singlehanded is selling thousands of people short.

    • People jumped from the God of Abraham to prophets Jesus and Mohamed and it isn't going well, so there's a precedent of the United States and stuff.

    • Because oftentimes the OS is just one piece of a solution. Musk has created solutions. Put another way - I don't necessarily care what OS powers my phone, my car, my TV, my toaster, my dog, etc. I do care, however, that my Tesla can go 0 to 60 in like 2 seconds. I do care that my phone can link up with my watch and my airpods to make managing my music experience more pleasant. That's why Steve Jobs was big and it's why Musk is big. Linux for all of its benefits is simply one piece to a solution...and arguab
      • " I don't necessarily care what OS powers my phone, my car, my TV, my toaster, my dog, etc."

        You should care, because otherwise you have no idea what that OS is doing behind your back. But most people don't, hence the infatuation with hucksters like Musk and shiny headphones.
        • Why would I care just about the OS when the entire solution may be proprietary and doing stuff behind my back? And no - I don't believe every piece of technology is going to be better/more secure by being open source. Security is only useful if *I* do the review, otherwise I'm still trusting other people. In which case I may as well trust people motivated by my wallet than those motivated by nothing more than their own ideology.
          • You should care about the OS and the entire solution as well to make sure it is not doing stuff behind your back. But you are a consumer, so I guess it makes sense that you only care that your car goes fast and you have expensive headphones. I think I now understand why people like Musk are your idols.
            • > But you are a consumer

              No. I'm just not stupid enough to goad myself into thinking I'm some sort of 1337 haxx0r. You can't truly be safe unless everything in your solution stack has published source code. You also can't be 100% certain you're secure unless YOU review the code. You also have to have a 100% complete understanding of the code, its underpinnings, and the technical aspects of what that code is doing. Even then there's "always a chance". 99.9999% of people in the world will never do this.
              • You don't need to be a hacker to understand why open source is important, and why you should care about Linus and not shiny headphones.
                • You can't seem to understand the original nature of your own fucking post. You bitched about Linus not being viewed as important as Musk. I said it was because Musk builds solutions - not parts. It's the same reason why Ford/Chevy/InsertYourFavCarBrandHere is celebrated and not the part maker who made the steering wheel cover. I don't care what powers my phone/etc in the same way people don't care who makes the bolts that bolt the engine to the car. Is it important? Yeah sure, OSes do a lot and the bolts th

    • Re:Linus (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @11:33AM (#56854206)

      It is the difference of the creator of the infrastructure vs the creator of the implementation.

      It is like thanking the Firemen who saved your life from the burning building Vs thanking the guys who built the road to get to your home from the fire station, or the materials expert that allowed your home to maintain structure to allow the firemen to reach your home in time.

      The Linux Kernel really doesn't do anything useful, unless there are people who work with it and create with it. Linus may had made a kernel to help control these super computers but it was a team of other people who needed to work with the Kernel to make a super computer out of it.

      Does Linus deserve Credit? Yes. Do Techies worship Musk? Some may.
      However Linus is mostly focused on making the kernel better (a noble goal on its own). While Musk is trying to solve problems, and may choose to use the Linux Kernel as a tool in solving the problem.

    • Linus has created literally trillions in economic activity. Singlehanded. But techies worship Musk. Very odd.

      Singlehanded?!? I guess, if you ignore all the work done on gcc, glibc, bash, systemd, other system tools, thousands of kernel developer contributors, thousands of people putting together distributions, people writing build systems, multiple languages, hardware manufactures, etc...

      Linus work is probably not even 1 millionth of the total work that went into producing your average computer, let alone super computers.

    • Re:Linus (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Drethon ( 1445051 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @12:02PM (#56854454)

      Linus has created literally trillions in economic activity. Singlehanded. But techies worship Musk. Very odd.

      I would say enabled, rather than created. But the work Linus and those who developed Linux did is seriously underrated.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by GodfatherofSoul ( 174979 )

      We don't worship competence in the US. We worship wealth and the gift of self-promotion.

      Musk has made a career pretending to be Tony Stark while never delivering.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Woah. Where is that butthurt coming from anyway?

      Here is an idea: Acknowledge and appreciate Torvalds for achievements that Torvalds has made. Acknowledge and appreciate Musk for achievements that Musk has made.

      Can you do that? Or have you been so conditioned to take a "side" on everything that this just no longer works.

      Maybe this will help: Leave worship for your church and Fox News.

    • Both have created trillions in economic activity. And was Linus single handed? Nope. Not even close. Many of us have contributed to Linux. And Linus was considered the top for many years. He, and many others, such as Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, Ian Murdock, Matthias Ettrich, Miguel de Icaza, Federico Mena, and many many others, are all names that are associated with making Linux what it is. In fact, even Dr. Tanenbaum deserves a lot of credit for Linux and more importantly, shaping Linus. And do not

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Megol ( 3135005 )

        You are being trolled FFS. And maybe you should stop drinking the Musk cool-aid...

      • Yeah no. He is launching satellites into LEO. Hardly creating trillions of activity, since many companies do that. And Tesla isn't even the largest EV manufacturer, or the largest solar manufacturer, or the largest EV battery manufacturer. You are deluded by Musk.

    • It isn't that bad with the recognition (I think).
      Linus is quite well known, and to be fair he was not alone, he wrote the kernel, but at the time there was quite a lot GNU software to go along and make Linux OS.

      Let's not be too harsh on the media, good for Musk a landing booster and Tesla Roadster cruising through the void are better suited for TV then Linux source code or rows and rows of computer racks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      This is what we call a false dichotomy.

    • Linus Torvalds didn't work in a vacuum and never claimed to. He got started using a book written by Andy Tanenbaum. He was in the right place at the right time (When the Intel 80386 came out which finally had the hardware support needed for a multi-tasking, demand paging Operating System. And yes, I know it wasn't the first chip to have that, but by then the Intel architecture dominated the market thanks to IBM choosing the Intel 8086 for it's PC, which is a different story, pardon the digression.)

      BSD Un

      • Linus Torvalds didn't work in a vacuum

        I am glad to here it. My physician has advised me that working in a vacuum is bad for your health.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by shoor ( 33382 )

          Alas, slashdot does not allow one to go back and edit posts. Otherwise I would change my previous post to read "doesn't work in a vacuum (metaphorically speaking)" so as not to confuse readers such as yourself. And you yourself would probably go back and edit your own post to read "glad to hear it" vice "glad to here it".

          Those are the breaks.

    • Yeah we all know that Paypal, SpaceX, and Tesla have contributed nothing to the world, definitely no economic activity ... And Linus has a vision man, a true vision. I hear he is planning a major change to the kernel .... number.

      Sarcasm aside, some very clever computer programmer's pet project becoming foundational in our world due to the dedication of 10s of thousands of people is quite a bit different from a visionary who attempts to completely change every industry he touches.

      If Linus wants to be worship

    • Linus is one of my heros for starting, sharing and managing the kernel.

      Musk is two of my heros for SpaceX and Tesla. More so Tesla as it has accelerated the EV acceptance / transition period. Also their battery banks. This is a small step in reducing the sh*tting in our own nest that we seem to be doing.

      SpaceX puts the biggest smile on my face but it's long term environmental value is probably less.

    • I admire Elon Musk. But I also admire Linus Torvalds for his huge contribution to the world of software. And Richard Stallman, for coming up with the key concept of free software that makes it all possible.

  • Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nickovs ( 115935 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @10:42AM (#56853882)

    ... Linux is also taking [iotforall.com] over [theregister.co.uk] the [redhat.com] world [ubuntu.com] of [ostroproject.org] IoT [techcrunch.com].

    I don't think that there has ever been another operating system that has been used across such a wide range of systems with such a range of scales.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kenja ( 541830 )
      Well... there's BSD. Which is in a LOT of embedded systems as well as desktops in the form of OS X.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • BSD has absolutely provided lots of competition to Linux AND its code is heavily borrowed into Linux. Both BSD and Linux developers really deserve credit for all that they have done. Sadly, the majority do NOT get recognition for it.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

        Oh yes. The OS that a man worked for apple for free to port it over so BSD wasn't relegated to history.

        They should have said - no thanks and moved to Linux. Really bad decision on Job's part. It's really too bad. They would have SELinux, a far more secure kernel, etc.

        I did win a bet, however. A stupid professor from U of California said that the old Mac windows system didn't have an OS below it. Argued like hell with me. Then they announced it was being moved over to BSD. Yea, shut him up.

    • Scalability (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I think this has been Linux's special sauce all along. It scales to nearly anything. It runs on:

      Desktop computers
      Smartphones
      Tablets
      Smart Watches
      Pretty much every kind of IoT Device (Thermostats, AC receptacles, shade controllers)
      NAS Servers
      Supercomputers
      Mainframes
      Routers and Switches
      Nearly every kind of embedded development board and SoC
      Portable media players
      Set-top boxes
      Blu-Ray players
      Home game consoles
      Satellites
      Test Equipment (Oscilloscopes, Spectrum Analyzers, Signal Generators)

      The only places it hasn't

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        The only place it hasn't made major inroads is desktop/laptop computers. It's either a major player or utterly dominant in almost every other area.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Would you rather have Linux, Apple/Mac, or Windows take over the world of IoT?
      Linux works.
      Apple will tell you you're holding it wrong and charge you 10x what everyone else charges.
      Windows will BSOD and tell you to defrag or reinstall, then steal all your data and knock up your toaster.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by orlanz ( 882574 )

      There is probably more computing power going through Minix code.

    • I don't think that there has ever been another operating system that has been used across such a wide range of systems with such a range of scales.

      Really?? Not even in all of history?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        Really?? Not even in all of history?

        All of it, since the 50s? Pretty we've got good resources to look back that far. Don't be lazy, if you want to refute their point provide a valid argument. "Nah ah!" is never a valid argument.

    • I can testify to this:

      I was tickled pink when my firewalls embraced Linux.

      Windows shops are goddam near impossible to protect from the bad nasties and, configured properly, Linux continued to become hardened over time.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 )

      If it wern't for the AT&T lawsuits FreeBSD may be the standard for non desktop systems. Linux wasn't really superior, But being it was made without the Unix legal baggage and was free. Allowed for easy adoptions of the OS, because at the time similar OS's from Unix would cost thousands of dollars. And DOS and Windows wasn't up to snuff.

      Being a free OS, it makes it easy to be implemented by a startup into new ideas such as IoT.

      Linux had taken it lead as BSD legality was under consideration. This lead a

      • Linux came to prominence long after the BSD lawsuits were settled.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sad_ ( 7868 )

        with your reasoning, the difference being the OSS license used, so we have to thank RMS for creating GPL!

  • Good for Linux! (Score:5, Informative)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @10:53AM (#56853950)
    And congrats to all that support and develop for it, especially one Mr Linus Benedict Torvalds.

  • Curmudgeon factor (Score:4, Insightful)

    by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @11:19AM (#56854114)

    Let's face it, as bright and influential as Torvalds has been, and continues to be, most people would not rate him highly on the warm and fuzzy scale. He is not a man that seeks approval. He is not a man that wants to be in the spotlight.

    In some ways I think he is like Steve Wozniak. Just a shy, quiet but brilliant engineer that would rather just be left alone than doing the cocktail party circuit.

    History tends to reward the Musks and Jobs of this world who are very smart in their own right but also very adept at self promotion.

    I tend to have more respect for Linus and Woz. They are the men behind the curtain doing all the heavy lifting.

    • Re:Curmudgeon factor (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @11:53AM (#56854386)

      History tends to reward the Musks and Jobs of this world who are very smart in their own right but also very adept at self promotion.

      Very adept at self promotion? Have you seen Elon Musk speak? He's a nerd. The quintessential nerd, with a head full of facts and figures and very poor command of his tongue. People lionize him and promote him, then blame him for self promoting, when in fact he's absolutely terrible at actually promoting himself. He talks about ideas and business activities and people call that self promotion. There's very little mention of himself, except when the interviewer inevitably asks, "Why are you doing this?" Then he answers with his, "I think humanity should be a multiplanetary species." That's about the only time he says "I think". The rest of the time, he's busy telling you what his companies are doing, and people somehow interpret that as self promotion.

      As opposed to what a Kardashian is saying, which is somehow.... fine? Humans baffle me.

  • ...An interesting architectural note: "GPUs, not CPUs, now power most of supercomputers' speed."

    Bitcoin mining is certainly one creative way to help justify for the cost of a supercomputer...

  • Kids these days (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @11:56AM (#56854406)

    An interesting architectural note: "GPUs, not CPUs, now power most of supercomputers' speed."

    Who is this beeftopia guy who is so monumentally ignorant of the history of supercomputing? That's not an "interesting architectural note". That's supercomputing since the very beginning of supercomputing. Supercomputers are supercomputers specifically because they had vector processors, before "GPU" was even a recognizable acronym. When PCs had nothing but framebuffers, supercomputers had vector processors. That was the point of building them. Once the GPU was invented, utilizing them to build a supercomputer was an inevitability.

    And get off my lawn!

  • "finally"?? (Score:3)

    by Khashishi ( 775369 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @11:57AM (#56854408) Journal

    When was it NOT the year of the Linux supercomputer?

  • Yeah, but (Score:3)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @12:32PM (#56854640) Homepage
    This means exactly nothing for the desktop [altervista.org] where it's most craved for.

  • Coming back around (Score:4, Informative)

    by afidel ( 530433 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @01:28PM (#56855014)

    It's interesting that relatively weak CPU coupled with multiple fast vector processors that could do massive parallel calculations was basically the design of the original Cray supercomputers and we're back to that design coupled with fast interconnects to team up many, many nodes. Kinda cool to see that Seymour had it right =)

  • I'll always have fond memories for AIX. It was my first UNIX I played with and learned. My dad worked for IBM and got an older RS/6000 to bring home. Firing that thing up with its stacks of external hard drives was like powering on the space shuttle. That experience allowed me to be the first in my college dorm to have a Linux box up and running. Good times.

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