I got my SGI Octane2 few weeks ago. I also had to order 13W3 to VGA-adapter to get picture to my monitor. I've been very happy about the performance of the system and IRIX seems to be a crown jewel of UNIX. SGI really proves megahertz isn't everything when it comes to performance. Example IRIX's proprietary Xserver "Xsgi" really screams, i've never seen such performance on ANY X11-based systems. Back to the megahertz myth, though. It doesn't matter if your CPU is running at 3000MHz if everything below it is crap (and the CPU-architecture is crap). Crossbar-architecture fells MUCH more responsible when my system is under heavy load. IRIX is also designed for these purposes and feels very mature. Present IRIX version (6.5) is running on it's 23th patch release now, you can even select between maintenance and "less" stable feature releases.

I got nice christmas presents this christmas. First, i got Mac OS X Panther and it rocks. I have never seen anything scream like that and Exposé is very good stuff. I also got USB keychain memory, it's very nice stuff. Just put it in a mac and it automatically mounts it on your desktop, too bad i haven't got it working in FreeBSD (yet), it seems the ZIP-drive is da0 and the USB-memory wants to be da0 too so there's a conflict, i must force ZIP-drive to da1 with kernel recompiling. Im particulary amazed on Panther's typography, it's just stunning. Go check all the cool stuff here: http://www.codepoetry.net/archives/2003/10/24/panthers_major_text_services_upgrade.php. With Panther Mac OS X seems to have reached the maturity you would expect (robustness, speed, user-interface), altough im not big fan of textured windows (metallic ones), thank god there are nice patches/fixes for them, you can also disable "textured windows" option with interface builder (i love NeXSTEPish stuff) when you dive into the application package and select user interface files in it.

Im getting sick of *BSD is dying trolls in /., *BSD is experiencing somekind of revival with all the Linux security issues and rise of Mac OS X. Agreed, Linux is getting all the press now but hype isn't a positive thing in long term, i wonder when the tables start to turn here. FreeBSD's 5 branch Production release will be a one kickass release. (scheduled for may 2003). Linux 2.6 wasn't such big milestone after all (most of the improvement's were available in Linux distribution's kernels).

I also today bought /. subscription today to support Rob Malda and the guys, i wish the dimes i spent would be used for making improvements in the signal-noise ratio, also i love to see other users comment postings from years ago. Seeing postings before unpaying users is nice feature, too.