this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Linux

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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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[–] tate@lemmy.sdf.org 36 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

Ah hahahaha!!!!

Windows! Some dumbass put Windows on a supercomputer!

[–] FuryMaker@lemmy.world 4 points 36 minutes ago

Probably need one, just for the benchmark comparisons.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 hours ago

Oh Xserve, we hardly knew ye 😢

[–] whaleross@lemmy.world 17 points 2 hours ago (2 children)
[–] superkret@feddit.org 24 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (2 children)

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

[–] whaleross@lemmy.world 5 points 49 minutes ago (1 children)

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

[–] Cyber@feddit.uk 2 points 19 minutes ago

Wha?

(searches interwebs)

Wow, that completely passed me by...

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 hours ago

Oh Xserve, we hardly knew ye 😢

[–] ChihuahuaOfDoom@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

Mac is a flavor of Unix, not that surprising really.

[–] whaleross@lemmy.world 3 points 54 minutes ago* (last edited 48 minutes ago)

Apple had its current desktop environment for it's proprietary ecosystem built on BSD with their own twist while supercomputers are typically multiuser parallel computing beats, so I'd say it is really fucking surprising. Pretty and responsive desktop environments and breathtaking number crunchers are the polar opposites of a product. Fuck me, you'll find UNIX roots in Windows NT but my flabbers would be ghasted if Deep Blue had dropped a Blue Screen.

[–] theotherben@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 hour ago

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

[–] Z3k3@lemmy.world 8 points 3 hours 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 10 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

about 10 q5vyrs ago

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

[–] Z3k3@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

Lol typing on phone plus bevy. Can't defend it beyond that

[–] superkret@feddit.org 9 points 2 hours ago (2 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.

[–] olosta@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

No there was HPC sku of Windows 2003 and 2008 : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2003#Windows_Compute_Cluster_Server

Microsoft earnestly tried to enter the space with a deployment system, a job scheduler and an MPI implementation. Licenses were quite cheap and they were pushing hard with free consulting and support, but it did not stick.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Cyber@feddit.uk 1 points 7 minutes ago* (last edited 3 minutes 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...?

[–] Z3k3@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

Yeh it was system x I worked on out default was redhat. I forget the other options but win and mac sure as shut wasn't on the list

[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 14 points 3 hours ago (2 children)
[–] jwt@programming.dev 44 points 3 hours ago (3 children)
[–] mumblerfish@lemmy.world 18 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

When you really have to look deep into god's mind you just have to put templeOS on a supercomputer.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

If you install TempleOS on the fastest supercomputer Frontier, you get Event Horizon.
WARNING: Gory, disturbing picture

[–] theotherben@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

What movie/tv show is this image from?

[–] superkret@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago

Event Horizon

[–] socsa@piefed.social 3 points 3 hours ago

Praise be upon him

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 1 points 3 hours ago

a glowie's worst nightmare

[–] superkret@feddit.org 15 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

You mean the NA/Mixed category?
Probably mostly z/OS and BS2000.
Or actually a mix between Linux and Unix.

[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago

Thanks for the links!

[–] virku@lemmy.world 8 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

Would the one made out of playstations be in this statistic?

[–] superkret@feddit.org 11 points 3 hours ago

I think you can actually see it in the graph.
The Condor Cluster with its 500 Teraflops would have been in the Top 500 supercomputers from 2009 till ~2014.
The PS3 operating system is a BSD, and you can see a thin yellow line in that exact time frame.

[–] A7thStone@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

Yes, in the linux stat. The otheros option on the early PS3 allowed you to boot linux, which is what most, of not all, of the clusters used.

[–] Rogue@feddit.uk 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Any idea how it'd look if broken down into distros? I'm assuming enterprise support would be favoured so Red Hat or Ubuntu would dominate?

[–] superkret@feddit.org 9 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

The previously fastest ran on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the current fastest runs on SUSE Enterprise Linux.
The current third fastest (owned by Microsoft) runs Ubuntu. That's as far as I care to research.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

We're gonna take the test, and we're gonna keep taking it until we get one hundred percent in the bitch!

[–] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

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 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 44 minutes 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 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.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 9 points 3 hours ago

There's no reason to believe smaller supercomputers would have significantly different OS's.
At some point you enter the realm of mainframes and servers.
Mainframes almost all run Linux now, the last Unix's are close to EOL.
Servers have about a 75% Linux market share, with the rest mostly running Windows and some BSD.