[Info-vax] Development Tooling

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-12-17 05:43:39 +0000, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply said:

> In article <pv6ru7$kci$2 at gioia.aioe.org>, =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?=
> <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:
> 
>> The problem is that a lot of scientific computing today is done in very 
>> large clusters. That means a lot of OS instances.
>> 
>> They can get Linux for free.
> 
> In some sense.  But they still pay for support, and for hardware.

Yes.  All Linux users pay for support.  All of them.  Every Linux user 
must have support.  That's the only way that Linux users can get 
questions answered, and the only way they can get fixes.  Paying for 
support is a requirement of the GPL, clearly.

As for the hardware prices, more than a few Linux and Unix folks are 
running on USD$30 hardware and smaller, and there are some interesting 
and inexpensive laptops, including the 14" Arm-based Pinebook USD$100.

For those folks that need more speed, they're running on grids and on 
GPUs and ilk, via CLFORTRAN or otherwise.  And—now that cryptomining 
has become passé—GPU prices are again quite reasonable.  Some folks on 
P8 and P9, and waiting for P10 if/when.  Or on yet higher-end boxes.

Yes, hardware does cost.  Prior to the arrival of OpenVMS on x86-64 in 
~2020, hardware often costs rather less than the HPE hardware was 
offering with OpenVMS, and often faster than the used equipment.



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