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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[–] [email protected] 87 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

That's highly debatable.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Wha?

(searches interwebs)

Wow, that completely passed me by...

[–] [email protected] 21 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

It was 33rd in 2010:

In November 2010, the Air Force Research Laboratory created a powerful supercomputer, nicknamed the "Condor Cluster", by connecting together 1,760 consoles with 168 GPUs and 84 coordinating servers in a parallel array capable of 500 trillion floating-point operations per second (500 TFLOPS). As built, the Condor Cluster was the 33rd largest supercomputer in the world and was used to analyze high definition satellite imagery at a cost of only one tenth that of a traditional supercomputer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster

https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/hires/playstations.jpg

https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

OMG I can feel the heat emanating from that photo

[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Makes me think how PS2 had export restrictions because "its graphics chip is sufficiently powerful to control missiles equipped with terrain reading navigation systems"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago

That's so friggin cool to think about!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 18 hours ago

Oh Xserve, we hardly knew ye 😢