• Thaurin@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      A supercomputer running Windows HPC Server 2008 actually ranked 23 in TOP500 in June 2008.

      • tate@lemmy.sdf.org
        0·
        2 months ago

        I always forget that Windows Server even exists, because the name is so stupid. “windows” should mean “gui interface to os.”

        edit: fixed redundacy.

          • KubeRoot@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            I’d say having a GUI is not inherently stupid. The stupid part is, if I understand it correctly, the GUI being a required component and the primary access method.

            • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
              1·
              2 months ago

              Yeah. Thankfully, Windows server cleaned up that stupidity starting around 2006 and finished in around 2018.

              Which all sounds fine until we meditate on the history that basically all other server operating systems have had efficient remote administration solutions since before 1995 (reasonable solutions existed before SSH, even).

              Windows was over 20 years late to adopt non-grapgical low latency (aka sane) options for remote administration.

              I think it’s a big part of the reason Windows doesn’t appear much on this chart.

          • dan@upvote.au
            0·
            2 months ago

            The GUI is optional these days, and there’s plenty of Windows servers that don’t use it. The recommended administration approach these days is PowerShell remoting, often over SSH now that Windows has a native SSH server bundled (based on OpenSSH).

            • yogurtwrong@lemmy.world
              0·
              2 months ago

              That gives me the idea of windows server installed on bare metal configured as a lightweight game runner. (much like a linux distro with minimal wm)

              I’ve seen people using slightly modified windows server as an unbloated gaming OS but I’m not sure if running a custom minimal GUI on windows server is possible. You seem knowledgeable on the subject, with enough effort, is it possible?

    • Spezi@feddit.org
      7·
      2 months ago

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

      • Psythik@lemmy.world
        03·
        2 months ago

        Meh, you just needed a discrete GPU, and not even a good one either. Just a basic, bare-bones card with 128MB of VRAM and pixel shader 2.0 support would have sufficed, but sadly most users didn’t even have that back in 06-08.

        It was mostly the consumer’s fault for buying cheap garbage laptops with trash-tier iGPUs in them, and the manufacturer’s for slapping a “compatible with Vista” sticker on them and pushing those shitboxes on consumers. If you had a half-decent $700-800 PC then, Vista ran like a dream.

        • porl@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 months ago

          No, it was mostly the manufacturers fault for implying that their machine would run the operating system it shipped with well. Well that and Microsoft’s fault for strong arming them to push Vista on machines that weren’t going to run it well.

          • Psythik@lemmy.world
            0·
            2 months ago

            APUs obviously weren’t a thing yet, and it was common knowledge back then that contemporary iGPUs were complete and utter trash. I mean they were so weak that you couldn’t even play HD video or even enable some of XP’s very basic graphical effects with most integrated graphics.

            Everyone knew that you needed a dedicated graphics card back then, so you can and should in fact put some blame on the consumer for being dumb enough to buy a PC without one, regardless of what the sticker said. I mean I was a teenager back then and even still I knew better. The blame goes both ways.

            • porl@lemmy.worldEnglish
              21·
              2 months ago

              No, if you weren’t “involved in the scene” and only had the word of the person at the store then you have no idea what an iGPU is, let alone why they weren’t up to the task of running the very thing it was sold with.

              You were a teenager in a time where teenagers average tech knowledge was much higher than before. That is not the same as someone who just learnt they now need one of those computer things for work. Not everyone had someone near them who could explain it to them. Blaming them for not knowing the intricacies of the machines is ridiculous. It was pure greed by Microsoft and the manufacturers.

  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
    3·
    2 months ago

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

  • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    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.

          • Grimpen@lemmy.ca
            2·
            2 months ago

            I think it was PS3 that shipped with “Other OS” functionality, and were sold a little cheaper than production costs would indicate, to make it up on games.

            Only thing is, a bunch of institutions discovered you could order a pallet of PS3’s, set up Linux, and have a pretty skookum cluster for cheap.

            I’m pretty sure Sony dropped “Other OS” not because of vague concerns of piracy, but because they were effectively subsidizing supercomputers.

            Don’t know if any of those PS3 clusters made it onto Top500.

      • Ben@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Mac is also also derived from BSD since it is built on Darwin

  • Z3k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    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

        • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
          1·
          2 months ago

          but it did not stick.

          Yeah. It was bad. The job of a Supercomputer is to be really fast and really parallel. Windows for Supercomputing was… not.

          I honestly thought it might make it, considering the engineering talent that Microsoft had.

          But I think time proves that Unix and Linux just had an insurmountable head start. Windows, to the best of my knowledge, never came close to closing the gap.

          • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            But, surely Windows is the wrong OS?

            Windows is a per-user GUI… supercomputing is all about crunching numbers, isn’t it?

            I can understand M$ trying to get into this market and I know Windows server can be used to run stuff, but again, you don’t need a GUI on each node a supercomputer they’d be better off with DOS…?

            • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
              1·
              2 months ago

              But, surely Windows is the wrong OS?

              Oh yes! To be clear - trying to put any version of Windows on a super-computer is every bit as insane as you might imagine. By what I heard in the rumor mill, it went every bit as badly as anyone might have guessed.

              But I like to root for an underdog, and it was neat to hear about Microsoft engineers trying to take the Windows kernel somewhere it had no rational excuse to run (at the time - and I wonder if they had internal beta versions of stuff that Windows ships standard now, like SSH…), perhaps by sheer force of will and hard work.

    • gerdesj@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      about 10 q5vyrs ago

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

  • snek_boi@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 months ago

    This looks impressive for Linux, and I’m glad FLOSS has such an impact! However, I wonder if the numbers are still this good if you consider more supercomputers. Maybe not. Or maybe yes! We’d have to see the evidence.

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
      1·
      2 months ago

      I wonder if the numbers are still this good if you consider more supercomputers.

      Great question. My guess is not terribly different.

      “Top 500 Supercomputers” is arguably a self-referential term. I’ve seen the term “super-computer” defined whether it was among the 500 fastest computer in the world, on the day it went live.

      As new super-computers come online, workloads from older ones tend to migrate to the new ones.

      So my impression is there usually aren’t a huge number of currently operating supercomputers outside of the top 500.

      When a super-computer falls toward the bottom of the top 500, there’s a good chance it is getting turned off soon.

      That said, I’m referring here only to the super-computers that spend a lot of time advertising their existence.

      I suspect there’s a decent number out there today that prefer not to be listed. But I have no reason to think those don’t also run Linux.

  • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

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

    • Matt@lemmy.ml
      0·
      2 months ago

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

      • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
        0·
        2 months ago

        For people who haven’t installed Windows before, the default boot drive is G, and the default file system is C

        So you only have 25 to work with (everything but G)

        • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
          0·
          2 months ago

          Almost, the default boot drive is C:, everything gets mapped after that. So if you have a second HDD at D: and a disk reader at E:, any USBs you plug in would go to F:.