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Mono on AIX and IBM i

mono-project.com

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Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#31

Post by dragontamer »

lambda wrote: post #26
dragontamer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/nxp-usa-inc/TWR-P1... Power certainly exists, its just less popular. The above board is under $250 and seems to be good enough for tinkering usage. Software support is certainly weaker. I think Power9 primarily exists for people who are planning to write their own application servers, or otherwise are willing to spend time recompiling OSS over to the Power9 architecture (Gent…

Raptor does have a sub-$2000 machine on pre-order: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html That is starting to approach the price point where it's worth it if you want to tinker, but with something that is a lot closer to a real machine than a $250 embedded board. I tried taking a look for cloud services that offer POWER machines, but couldn't find anything that I could just sign up for and try for relativ…

I remember hearing of some Power cloud offerings, but unfortunately I can't find any these days.

I find old-press releases going to broken web-pages: https://www.ovh.com/world/news/cp1606.world_exclusive_ovhcom...

But that's not really helpful. Hmm, I guess Power8 / Power9 cloud systems seem to have disappeared. IBM really needs to work on getting cloud-instances ready for tinkering.

> Raptor does have a sub-$2000 machine on pre-order: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html

With RAM and storage, it will be $3000+.

With "price/performance" parts, like the $1300 18-core CPU (something that would make the entire purchase worth it IMO), you'd be above $4k+.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#32

Post by equalunique »

gaius wrote: post #19
lambda wrote: post #3

Seems like IBM is really increasing its investment in open source software and hardware for PowerPC recently. I've noticed them offering bounties for PowerPC related work on Rust, there's this recent work on Mono, and OpenPOWER has led to the development of truly open servers and workstations like the Talos II.

Well there’s free as in beer, free as in speech, and free as in working for IBM without getting paid. They just laid off thousands of people from their Healthcare group. On top of thousands and thousands more in other groups recently. Couldn’t some of them have been reassigned to work on this stuff if it’s of value to IBM?

Healthcare tech is quite different from porting software to AIX/IBM i. I would be surprised if 1% of the people let go were actually willing to transfer into that sort of work.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#33

Post by gaius »

cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #24
gaius wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there’s free as in beer, free as in speech, and free as in working for IBM without getting paid. They just laid off thousands of people from their Healthcare group. On top of thousands and thousands more in other groups recently. Couldn’t some of them have been reassigned to work on this stuff if it’s of value to IBM?

Are or were any of them experts on the things that IBM wants done? Are the involved in the communities that IBM wants work done in? If not, then they're still a net drain while they come up to speed, and engaging these communities and spreading out some money in the form of bounties makes sense.

they're still a net drain while they come up to speed

And we wonder why companies expect candidates to have years of experience in the exact stack they use and don’t offer training to anyone with other experience, just not buzzword-compliant.

All these people were smart enough to get hired in the first place remember.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#34

Post by freehunter »

falcon620 wrote: post #13

Huh. I honestly thought AIX was dead by now. I remember porting something to AIX 20 years ago, it wasn't fun. I guess IBM stuff doesn't die, it just gets more expensive.

I mean... it's Unix. That's like saying "I ported something to Linux 20 years ago, shouldn't it be dead by now?" and also like saying "I ported something to OSX or Solaris, it wasn't fun" because AIX is Unix exactly like OSX or Solaris.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#35

Post by lambda »

dragontamer wrote: post #31
lambda wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raptor does have a sub-$2000 machine on pre-order: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html That is starting to approach the price point where it's worth it if you want to tinker, but with something that is a lot closer to a real machine than a $250 embedded board. I tried taking a look for cloud services that offer POWER machines, but couldn't find anything that I could just sign up for and try for relativ…

I remember hearing of some Power cloud offerings, but unfortunately I can't find any these days. I find old-press releases going to broken web-pages: https://www.ovh.com/world/news/cp1606.world_exclusive_ovhcom... But that's not really helpful. Hmm, I guess Power8 / Power9 cloud systems seem to have disappeared. IBM really needs to work on getting cloud-instances ready for tinkering. > Raptor does have a sub-$2000 ma…

Oh, yeah, looks like you also have to add the CPU, that's not included in the base price.

Although, for RAM and storage you can purchase that separately at cheaper prices.

I just tried to sign up for IBM's cloud, to see if I could use the limited free trial or $200 credit to try out one of the bare-metal systems.

Nope. The limited free trial only seems to apply to a few of their SaaS offerings; and the $200 credit also doesn't apply to their "infrastructure services" like VMs, bare metals servers, storage, etc.

Additionally, it looks like you need to get manual approval for you account to be able to use the VMs; even once I added my credit card info, they tell me my account needs to be reviewed by someone before I can actually rent server time.

On AWS or GCS, you just sign up and spin up VMs. I've used that many times for quick compat testing against different operating systems, some quick extra CPU cycles, deploying test servers, and so on.

But on IBM's cloud, you need someone to actually manually approve your account before you can do anything but use their SaaS offerings.

They really don't seem to want to attract people casually trying things out.

edit: after a bit, they did approve my account for infrastructure access. But the bare-metal POWER servers can't be rented by the hour, only by the month, and they start at $1000 per month. Still not really helpful for casual exploration. They also have such wonderful usability features as requiring you to allow popups in order to configure and order servers or VMs.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#36

Post by falcon620 »

freehunter wrote: post #34
falcon620 wrote: post #13

Huh. I honestly thought AIX was dead by now. I remember porting something to AIX 20 years ago, it wasn't fun. I guess IBM stuff doesn't die, it just gets more expensive.

I mean... it's Unix. That's like saying "I ported something to Linux 20 years ago, shouldn't it be dead by now?" and also like saying "I ported something to OSX or Solaris, it wasn't fun" because AIX is Unix exactly like OSX or Solaris.

Cause every Unix-like OS is exactly the same?

At the end of the 90s they had spent like 15+ years diverging from each other. Some more gracefully than others.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#37

Post by justincormack »

dragontamer wrote: post #18
Narishma wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main problem is that there are no low-cost POWER systems for people to tinker with like there are for x86 and ARM. You are limited to expensive high-end servers, and that leads to a lack of software support.

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/nxp-usa-inc/TWR-P1... Power certainly exists, its just less popular. The above board is under $250 and seems to be good enough for tinkering usage. Software support is certainly weaker. I think Power9 primarily exists for people who are planning to write their own application servers, or otherwise are willing to spend time recompiling OSS over to the Power9 architecture (Gent…

That board is a 32 bit power board, not really much use for ppc64 development.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#38

Post by freehunter »

falcon620 wrote: post #36
freehunter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... it's Unix. That's like saying "I ported something to Linux 20 years ago, shouldn't it be dead by now?" and also like saying "I ported something to OSX or Solaris, it wasn't fun" because AIX is Unix exactly like OSX or Solaris.

Cause every Unix-like OS is exactly the same? At the end of the 90s they had spent like 15+ years diverging from each other. Some more gracefully than others.

But it's not Unix-like. It's Unix. It's actually Unix, as in UNIX™.

But at any rate, your comment implied it should be dead because it's so old. Which is a silly statement, considering just how old UNIX™/Unix systems actually are.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#39

Post by cuckcuckspruce »

gaius wrote: post #33
cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are or were any of them experts on the things that IBM wants done? Are the involved in the communities that IBM wants work done in? If not, then they're still a net drain while they come up to speed, and engaging these communities and spreading out some money in the form of bounties makes sense.

they're still a net drain while they come up to speed And we wonder why companies expect candidates to have years of experience in the exact stack they use and don’t offer training to anyone with other experience, just not buzzword-compliant. All these people were smart enough to get hired in the first place remember.

Yes, but you need to look at the ROI. If it costs more to keep these people on and train them than it would to get the community to do these things then IBM is rationally externalizing these costs. They're not a charity.

That said, I agree that if they need support for these things internally, long term, and consistently, then it makes more sense to train up staff internally.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#40

Post by sigzero »

falcon620 wrote: post #13

Huh. I honestly thought AIX was dead by now. I remember porting something to AIX 20 years ago, it wasn't fun. I guess IBM stuff doesn't die, it just gets more expensive.

The whole hosting environment for the project I am on went from Solaris to AIX.
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