deiz Posted June 30, 2004 Report Share Posted June 30, 2004 I know that linux is robust, powerful and flexible ok... but what exactly is possible with it? (remember exotic not industrial, but close to it i guess) Consider the following silly millionnaire setups... Multiple soundcards? one recording the other playing back? and maybe another for system sounds? 3 soundcards? one powerful video card feeding multiple monitors, and/or maybe a tv? or more than one video card feeding multiple monitors or multiple video cards for a lovely widescreen monitor and obviously the desktop stretched, or maybe two screens on one widescren desktop?, what are the biggest resolutions we can get? (i know it's down to the hardware, but what can linux do? what is known and a popular massive size?) What about multiple processors? i know it can handle multiple processors, SMP right, but how many? and what gains can be had and how does linux handle all the power? and what motherboard can handle more than two processors? What about RAID, what can be done? how many HDD's can be put in the raid, and how big can be done? And memory?? I got 512MB, Linux flies on it, but say u did scientific applications at home, or proper 3D stuff, or massive DB's? How many Gb's can Linux handle and share resourcefully? What exactly is Linux able to do, or not do as the case may be? I all the above little q's might be a bit vague, but i'm just curious, I am askin in a homeuser kinda way here, not so much industrial... i.e building a dream machine which is more than capable of doing anything u throw at it or do anything u ask it to... lets see what is said here... this will be interesting!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted June 30, 2004 Report Share Posted June 30, 2004 i would answer your question, but it seems to have put my brain into an infinite loop. i'll get back to you have it response to my repetitive ctrl-c's. :wacko: :wacko: :wacko: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rben Posted June 30, 2004 Report Share Posted June 30, 2004 Google is your friend. You can easily learn many of the answers to your questions by doing a little bit of searching. Doing some research on your questions before you post them on a board shows that you are really interested in the answers and have some respect for time and talents of the people you are asking to respond to your queries. Linux is a modern operating system. Linux handles multiple monitors without problems. Many present day high end video cards are capable of displaying on two monitors at the same time. I have such a configuration myself. Most current personal computer configurations are limited to 4G of memory which Linux can handle comfortably. I do not know what the upper limit is on it's memory handling capability. I suggest you search Google with the key words RAID and Linux to learn more about those topics. You might also find that some research on the topics of sound cards and multiple channels will enlighten you on your questions in that regard. Linux is currently used on devices such as PDAs, Wireless Routers, Personal Computers on up to Super Computer configurations. Search for Beowulf. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted July 1, 2004 Report Share Posted July 1, 2004 Google is your friend. ditto. And dont forget, Linux Google! www.google.com/linux Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzatch Posted July 1, 2004 Report Share Posted July 1, 2004 My Nvidia 2 card is presently pushing my monitor to 1900+X1400+. Everything runs just fine and still fast enough for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imwithstupid Posted July 1, 2004 Report Share Posted July 1, 2004 (edited) In response to your questions about sound cards...yes multiple sound cards are supported by many a *nix variant (including linux). Why would you have multiple sound cards? Many more channels is the answer...a high end dolby surround system only has 5 channels and bass. Just imagine the realism with many more channels. Of course you need some sort of software processor to filter and send signals to all your multiple channels...check out VBAP. The idea though is that you need a lot more speakers/channels to get a better 3D effect, than is cost effective (like around 15-20). Also in these setups you usually have to stand dead center in them or they don't work as well. Edited July 1, 2004 by imwithstupid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwiftDeath Posted July 1, 2004 Report Share Posted July 1, 2004 Cool. I never knew about google.com/linux? it searches only linux stuff? Thats awesome now I won't have to burden you guys with as much questions, because my searches will be more direct. Thats so cool google made a linux section. Lol <---- easily amused. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted July 2, 2004 Report Share Posted July 2, 2004 Linux isnt really a limiting factor so much as x86 motherboards and architecture memory addressing is CPU dependant ... not OS so x86 is limited to 4GB anyway (pretty much useless in our high end machines) whereas SPARCII's were capable of 1TB.... its only the last couple of years that 64bit x86 compatible CISC chips have become even available oand only this year they have become mainstream(ish) Somehow people view memory as percent of possible, I have an old U60 in my office with 4GB RAM... its the absolute minimum spec we'd consider .. and this is just an old 2x360Mhz machine... yet people often only use <1GB in linux x86 machines. This is a function of availability and the fact that slots are not available or the bios supporting it... so its kinda catch-22 1GB+ mem chips are expensive I just checked and a 2GB PC400 is $1000 whereas a 512 is <$100 (1/4 price/GB) so a fully spec'd 32 bit machine would cost $2000 just in 2x2GB chips.. (4GB would be the absolute lowest we could use professionally) once again PCI-X is just being more common... etc. etc. basically x86 was a poor mans sports car... its inferior to almost everything else but its WAY cheaper.... so anyone who wanted to run linux on a real computer would buy a real one to run it on, not x86 several attempts were made at getting past this restriction, DEC famously made the alpha, way ahead of equivalent Intel at the time but ... well thats history... people we just not ready to pay big bucks for a x86 on steroids... and Microsoft was largely to blame (I always manage to blame em) seriosly though they and the cheap PC clone manufactuerers convinced us all that running 386 optimised code was normal.... on a Pentium... While the normal workld went to 64 bit processors the Intel/Microsoft world stuck it out in 32bit becuase of compatibility.... heck game consoles were running 64 bit CPU's, graphics card 128 bit GPU's but our CPU's were still in 32bit . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deiz Posted July 2, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 2, 2004 thats a good answer gowtar, interesting ye. so basically for an exotic computeri i'd have to look at a computer that isn't x86 based. cool, keep the answers coming, this could get intersting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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