In a message dated: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 11:05:01 EST
Rich Payne said:
>On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Paul Lussier wrote:
>
>Only if you think that DE500 (aka Tulip based) and Intel EEpro100 network
>cards using a PCI bus are propriatary :)
I mean the system as a whole. The proprietary-ness comes from the
entire package as a whole being qual'ed to work with very specific
software.
You can ship alpha systems with Linux, and still have it be a
proprietary package, since as the vendor, you're determining the
hardware you'll support.
Technically, VA systems stuff would be considered proprietary, since
they only support a certain narrow list of hardware. However, the
hardware they use is quite similar to what the average person uses
anyway.
Now, if they were to add features to their system which did not exist
from any other vendor, then that would be *really* proprietary.
What makes the Alpha systems proprietary, I guess "commercial level"
would be a more apropos description, is that is has things like
EEPROMs.
Hmmm, maybe it just comes down to the fact that no matter how fast
Intel/AMD get their CPUs, at the heart of the matter is that PCs are
just toy computers. The basic architecture hasn't changed in over 20
years, they were never designed to be enterprise-level machines, and
the design just basically lacks a lot of nice features that other
systems like Sun, Dec, HP, and IBM design in to the overal
architecture from the beginning.
--
Seeya,
Paul
----
It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.
If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!
**********************************************************
To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following text in the
*body* (*not* the subject line) of the letter:
unsubscribe gnhlug
**********************************************************
