[geeks] Desktops

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Thu, 9 May 2002, Joshua D Boyd wrote:

> Sparc plug as workstation?  How did you give it a head?  I suppose one
> could use it with an X-Term and still call it a workstation.

A SPARCplug has one mbus slot, one sbus slot, a power connector, a
multiport connector, and a scsi connector.  The multiport breaks out into
a keyboard port and two serial ports.  Drop it in a minitower case and
it's a perfectly usable workstation, especially with TGX+ framebuffer and
a HyperSPARC 200 under the hood.  Keeping it cool/happy was a challenge.

> I use dia for diagramming things.  It works well on linux, probably OK on
> Solaris, and probably pretty badly on irix though.

Dia looks okay, but I've wrapped by brain around xfig and rather like its
perversions.

(looks at webpage)

Damn, it's advanced a -lot- since the last time I looked at it (v0.2 or
something).  I might have to give it a spin again.  So long as it can
export to EPS (preferably vector EPS instead of raster), I'm happy.

> If I needed to actually put together a presentation, I'd probably either
> go to the Mac or use the GIMP.  But, as far as I know, nobody has made
> a decent program for controlling slide style presentations.

What's wrong with Netscape?  <center><img src=foo><br>caption</center>

Add "previous" and "next" links at the bottom--what more could you want?

> Mathematica is available for linux, solaris, and irix.  

For $$$$.  I have a Windows student license.  The student edition does not
run on IRIX.  For a small fee, I can hop to MacOS or Linux, but not a
commercial Unix.

> Maxima should just work if you have either CMUCL or GCL, and GCL should just 
> work on Irix, but I can't test that as I no longer have Irix access.

Oh, it -should-, but it segfaults left and right.

> Gnumeric used to be a program that would "JustWork" on Irix, but now
> it requires full GNOME rather than just GTK.

Bleah!

> I didn't know that DrScheme ran on Irix.

I ported it.  :)

At least, I ported version 52 for my own use.  103 seems to run out of the
box.

> As to doing calc by hand, surely you must have read SICP by now!

Sadly, no.  I keep meaning to.  I really don't -like- Scheme as a
language, but the syntax is so easy that I keep falling back to it for
quick-and-dirty computation, and I'm even working on an embedded extension
language with Scheme-like syntax.

> In one of the later chapters, it teaches you to write your own
> deriver.

Yes, it shouldn't be that hard.  I just haven't done it yet.  I don't do
calculus on a daily basis--only when I need to prove something, so it
doesn't seem to be work the time.

> It doesn't talk about integration, but numeric integration is
> easy, and symbolic is done unbelievably badly by both Mathematica and
> Maxima, so why bother?

It does it better than I do.  At least their solutions (no matter how
grotesque) do work consistently.  My fiancee is the math brain in this
relationship--I just know enough to get work done.

--Jonathan