IRIX on x86? A Look at Lirix! (feat. MaXXdesktop)

[@ralfbaechle]

There was an actual IRIX port to x86 done by a coworker. This was a one man project meant to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology at a time when SGI tried to replace their MIPS processors with something more standard - not last to get rid of the massive cost of maintaining an implementation of their own microprocessor architecture. The guy who did it was using IRIX/x86 for quite a while on his personal workstation but in the end the project fizzled out without ever having had the chance to be productized. I don't know if a copy or the source code of IRIX have survived. This project happened around the same time as the infamous "Banana 2000" project but that's a different story.

[@David_Phantom]

What I find funny is that XFS is actually faster than ext4 when using SSD's. I tend to use XFS now when I install linux. Or JFS, but that's because I like using weird filesystems.

[@WindowsG]

Oh huh, that's actually really interesting so it is much more common than I thought. cool!

[@R4dm1n]

Compared to btrfs?

[@David_Phantom]

@@R4dm1n BTRFS is slow, also not a reliable as people seem to think. I have personally had BTRFS fuck up in uncorrectable ways 2 times on two separate drives that were both perfectly fine when I tested them. I have used BTRFS to RAID drives before, and that actually worked well, but I didn't keep the RAID for long as it was just a test. The thing I find strange about BTRFS is that it has all this support, such as the excellent WinBTRFS driver for windows which works amazingly well, while still seeming to have weird issues that other filesystems don't have.

[@wheezybackports6444]

XFS is in general faster. I used to always partition my drives with it and when I told my friends about it they did it too. We all noticed the performance improvement. I'm just too lazy to partition using XFS now days.

[@JamieCrookes]

There's a fairly big drawback of XFS, unless you are installing purely as a data drive for storing large files. It has a huge block size compared to other filesystems and you end up with a fairly large overhead on disks with lots of small files. SGI designed the filesystem to cater for the biggest use case that SGI machines were known for. Video. Back in 2002, before RedHat desktop became fedora you could download a custom RedHat installer boot disk that allowed XFS from the installer. I remember being wowed by it too, as 2002 was when I bought a fair amount of cheap, old SGI machines. They lost a tonne of value around 2002ish. Fast forward 20 years and they are 10-12 times more expensive than what you'd pay in 2002 due to the modest number of machines built. As more and more break down there's less and less availability. I wish i'd have checked prices in 2011 when I moved house, as my collection (assumed worthless) was tossed into a skip due to lack of space.

[@MrDarchangelomni]

Awesome info... I played around on an Indigo2 in the early 2000's and was blown away by how far beyond normal computers sgi machines were, The station was paired with 2 of the biggest intergraph monitors I have ever seen, they were slaved together as an extended display, and when all was said and done, It was a computer that could render finished graphics in real time, on a total of 60" worth of High definition CRT crisp 16:9 display... The two days I spent on that computer before leaving the customers with it were magical. Each monitor looked like a volkswagen, and weighed more than humans. Also: the demon pronunciation looks like(or close too) this: Suc-kYoo-Bess / In-kyoo-bess

[@Doesntcompute2k]

My three SGI Indigo2's and two SGI O2's running SGI IRIX 6.5.23 salute you! I wish SGI would have finished the X86 port of IRIX. :( Sad times for sure! IRIX modernized for X86-64 AND current graphics boards would really rock. It would be something to see given all of the video tools.

[@pfacka]

That's quite a collection! And yeah very sad story - all money pouring from mass adaptation of x86 killed almost everyone else. At least SGI's most important work STL, XFS, OpenGL and many others lives on. If that is any consolation SGI's legacy is still living out there. IRIX core system is just modified System V Unix - not that special and now well surpassed by others. What was special was their specialized SW working closely with their specialized HW - sadly that can't be reasonably replaced. Outside small microcontrollers last mass produced MIPS HW was Playstation 2. Tough if you have source code it probably can be adapted to contemporary Unix-like OS like Linux or FreeBSD and thus modern HW too as frankly almost everything valuable from their legacy was gutted. But if all you have is binary privilege of running them is limited to those few custodians like you. But there is a glimmer of hope. We have now ARM making it's way into servers and workstations, first usable RISK-V HW is out, finally decided MIPS to open license their cores too. I'm sometimes daydreaming that I would take aFrankenstein with pieces borrowed from NetBSD and such but I'm sure it can be done.

[@radivojevasiljevic3145]

@@pfackaIRIX was very special system. It had what no other OS had: scalability. Linux 2.6 kernel and scalability (hello fine grain locking, goodbye big kernel lock) - thank for that to SGI. Try to find anything comparable which doesn't have SGI roots. You know, scaling OS as single system image to 512 or even 1024 CPUs. ccNUMA? SGI made working systems with all OS jazz (allocation of "near" memory, scheduler aware of NUMA etc) to make it really usable and scalable. You can check IRIX 6.5 source code for details if you like.

[@nathantherandomguy1935]

Right after a saw this video I impulse installed Lirix on my main Linux machine, I'm serous I'm typing this on Lirix right now, and it's 3:30 am.

[@yatapaws]

lol i impulse installed it on my t530

[@pianokeyjoe]

lol, I have this on my MX LINUX Debian system along with NsCDE and CDE. Loving the nostalgia! Now the file manager fsv is so old you are lucky it runs at all in modern Linux! Checking the release date it was back in 2001! I did get it to work in SuSE Linux 7.1 and 7.3 back then but it crashed alot then too... Wow in 2023 there are NO file managers like this! That sucks...

[@kantraa]

you're the only mx linux user i've seen other than runwiththedolphin holy hell

[@lukedavis436]

Another banger of a video.... KZbin seems to he recommending me a lot of SGI stuff. Lately, it must be a sign.

[@hs-tc]

Say what you will about the whole MaXX controversy, but, this is pretty based. I've dabbled with making a "turnkey" Linux image fitted with CDE, MaXX, and GNUstep, but, I never considered basing it off of Arch. Sounds like I've got me a nice weekend project now!

[@detecta]

maxx controversy?

[@hs-tc]

@@detecta Where's the source code to MaXX? What "special license" to use the IRIX sources (claims to be from HPE, but, does that really line up?)? Where's the source to the modified version of ROX-Filer? Why is he actually violating his license he supposedly signed with SGI and running it on FreeBSD? He claimed to be changing the license to the BSD license, but, the IRIX sources are full of third-party copyrights (though Sun managed to pull it off in a quick fashion). The whole thing is filled with weirdness...

[@marshmallow_larissa]

Btw. You can change the cpu inside the T420. Its in a socket and easily done. Did it on my xD

[@nickbooker5579]

When you get the "less" pager, the one which was showing the diffs with the colon prompt at the bottom, you need to press q to quit it.

[@WyvernDotRed]

It doesn't have everything but the Chaotic AUR is a repository with compiled binary versions of AUR packages.

[@commentarysheep]

But if you want to, you could combine this with paru, a modern AUR helper (don't recommend yay anymore, it's not maintained anymore, the creators have long moved on to making paru instead) to compile and install packages easier from the AUR that have no binary versions in the Chaotic AUR repositories, and then you finally got that ultimate AUR setup to run software from it.

[@kreuner11]

Sometimes the regular AUR has -bin packages

[@Hamradiofromabalcony-fw6xe]

To be honest, I think you could install it on your usb-stick. The installer loads the OS in memory, so you could whipe the USB stick and install the system on it.

[@leandrusfanzec]

5:38 jajajajajajja , Thanks Snoopie!

[@udirt]

I played with the MAXX desktop after watching for it so many years. there was some memleak on the test (centos) box and it ran out of ram. but I gotta soon try again.

[@NervesiT]

0:57 nice ralsei plushie bro

[@grumpybunny]

I have the exact minifridge you put up a picture of. Hasn't been booted in almost 20 years...

[@jwoody8815]

I plan to run this When Windows 10 goes wayside. (Might run 11 in a VM, but otherwise I will no longer mainline Windows)

[@waynebyrne2201]

it works under VMWARE ,,,,,,,Which is nice

[@shrodinger3844]

we LOVE the aur (but fr yay is a lifesaver because makepkg is sooo annoying to do like a billion times when deps need to be built

[@Ozzy_Helix_]

@2:24 that is FearOfDark - Get a Brian Morans isn't it?

[@somacruz8272]

do videos on OS2/Warp they're underrated and very uncommon on YT.

[@WindowsG]

I've been looking into it actually! I found a computer recently that has native support for the much less popular OS/2 Warp 3, it's just a pain to record being passive matrix so no promises I'll get it done soon, def on the list tho ;3

[@somacruz8272]

@@WindowsG Best of luck! I'm looking forward to it. Warp 3 can be tricky.

[@Doesntcompute2k]

@@WindowsG Maybe OS/2 in a VM? Then just screen cap.

[@_lenn.box_]

to install yay the "easy" way: pacman -S --needed git base-devel yay idk if this works on IRIX, but i also don't know why it wouldn't

[@lucyinchat]

Oh no.

[@shaurz]

lol it's funny to watch someone struggling with pacman commands. it's seared in to my brain since i've used it for... 18 years!?? wtf

[@ciberzero]

i tried to install it but password is always wrong after installation, tried using default even wont go thru with it

[@boobietm2880]

having the same problem

[@ciberzero]

@@boobietm2880 what I did I went to the maxxdestop site followed theme instalation tutorial and managed to make it work i think is straitfoward

[@alexdhall]

Paste is probably ctrl + shift + v fyi - 11:18

[@tibr]

Project E 😸

[@Ozzy_Helix_]

I wish AR looked like that

[@billwall267]

Indianapolis uses different timezone rules than Eastern Time. Shouldn't use it unless you live there.

[@cristianpoelstra7268]

Works great testing on sony vaio only the shutdown dont work

[@BrianTaylor-AlwaysInTao]

Is the flight sim on there???

[@JackBender]

Where's the sound sample at 11:08 coming from?

[@WindowsG]

neco arc >:3

[@JackBender]

Aw'ight, thx @@WindowsG

[@JSparrowist]

Tried installing. Default user and password do not work. At all. Can’t create a user either. No password works.

[@bootplog]

what's funny is no one is acknowledging this issue anywhere lol, so the OS isn't usable

[@Matsilagi]

I know its an old video but any tips on getting Proton / Steam to behave with it? Wanted to get a super unconventional setup and even managed to install a few gaming related stuff lime RetroArch however Proton is a no-go. Seeing that its based on Arch, maybe someone can help me with it.

[@araarathisyomama787]

If it's anywhere near Arch and you have a capable hardware - I don't remember default steam package causing any problems for me (X11, nvidia 1660 SUPER). I believe your GPU must have drivers that actually support any relatively recent Vulkan API and extensions and there is no way around it. If it's an old ThinkPad - don't even bother trying. I learned that there is just no way around poor hardware/driver support.

[@Matsilagi]

@@araarathisyomama787 I tried lots of stuff but nothing worked due to incompatibilities with X11 and the drivers, I'm pretty dumb at Linux so a guide would help a lot.

[@jayrony69]

I have an original iPad too!!!

[@chsimanpizza805]

I made a unb instaling on laptop after installing is say a file is not found and entering in the rescue mode

[@TheMadisonHang]

i only note these computers because they were used for ps1 game development thats what i gleem from it let me know how it goes and whats gonna happen to it!

[@radivojevasiljevic3145]

N64 games were developed on Indy with special card. Interactive movies in mid 1990s were done on Indigo 2s.

[@MystycCheez]

nice

[@BlueSky_fur]

You should’ve joined a server on mc, could’ve given you even better performance 😄

[@kreuner11]

Bro doesn't know how to exit `less` or what a diff is☠️

[@LKComputes]

420 part 2

[@chsimanpizza805]

But how to put password

[@Hassan_Saeed11]

Please make a video on How to Activate Iphone 3gs without Sim card

[@WindowsG]

buy me a 3gs and I'll look into it

[@TransitAndTeslas]

Tried to download this OS, and they have to use stupid MEGA. GAHHH!!!! I can't stand MEGA.

[@jameschums]

great to see this stuff again