On 2009-02-04, Christopher Tidy wrote:
Hi Don,
Yes, that is the version of GIMP that I have installed. I think it's
version 1.2. I found it more stable and faster than every copy of
version 2 that I could find.
As far as the speed is concerned, I find 2.0.2 is quite fast
enough -- at least on a Sun Blade 2000 with dual 1.2 GHz CPUs. And the
thing which makes the biggest difference in speed for *any* serious
image processor is the amount of RAM present. Running the Ultra-2 with
a full 2 GB of RAM made a significant difference. Running my SB-2K with
6 GB of RAM (instead of the 3 GB which I was running before) makes a big
difference in the speed of gimp 2.0.2.
It wasn't the speed once it was up and running, it was the start-up
time. On the same machine, GIMP 1.2 was quick, whereas GIMP 2 seemed to
take forever!
Hmm ... IIRC, "the GIMP" -- either version -- will load a ton of
plug-ins at the first time it is run by root -- and will then
automatically force a core dump and process that into an executable
which has everything pre-loaded. Emacs does the same thing.
If you always started it as a user, and never as root, it would
never get the chance to do the "core dump and turn into executable" magic,
so it would always be slow to start.
Maybe the later Solaris 10 distributions did that for you before
packaging it.
I certainly don't notice the long delay -- but with two 1.2 GHz
CPUs, I guess that I would not. :-)
O.K. It does still load the plugins at start time, and it takes
15 seconds from the [Enter] key to it having everything displayed and
ready to work. I guess that with your 300 MHz CPUs, it would take on
the order of a full minute -- depending on how much of that is the disk
speed instead of the CPU speed.
[ ... ]
2.0.2 will save both.
As would one version of GIMP 1.2, or possibly 1.x, which I had from
http://www.blastwave.org/ in 2004. And it was stable. But I can only use
it now if I use all the software dating from 2004.
Wrong! Install once and run "ldd `which gimp`" on it.
Note where it finds each shared lib. Here is what my gimp on
the SB-2K shows up:
[ ... ]
Next -- copy each of those shared libs into a directory and burn
a CD-ROM of it. Many of the shared libs are in /usr/lib, or perhaps
/usr/openwin/lib. Others in /usr/sfw/lib.
[ ... ]
I'll bet that at the end, you will find only a very few shared
libs which need to be added. Keep them in the directory, and keep
invoking gimp via the wrapper. If you discover that *all* of the shared
libs can be removed form that directory, you will have proven that it
will work without needing to add anything to the system.
As with many things in Unix which appear at first to be impossible, I
can see that this can be done, with quite a bit of work. One day I'd
like to try it, but right now I need to do some programming which will
make me cash :-).
I first read that as "Make me crash". :-)
I wish I could find a version of GIMP 1.2 which would save GIF and PNG
and was not dependent on shared libraries.
[ ... ]
Even if I can find a stable
version of GIMP 2, it was seriously slow when I tried it. Any idea where
I might find a later version of GIMP 1.2?
Here is the latest version (1.2.5) at this URL (and others):
http://mirror.umoss.org/gimp/gimp/v1.2/v1.2.5/
[ ... ]
But again, this is in source code form, and you have the great fun of
compiling it (and all the needed libraries which you don't have). And,
you'll probably need a lot of them, if you insist in sticking with
Solaris 9. :-)
Thanks for the link. I began to download that source code, but the
server kept dropping the connection. I'll try again later.
O.K. Good luck there.
snip
Hmm ... "rare and expensive". Try an ebay search for:
Toshiba DVD-ROM SCSI M1401
[ ... ]
Sorry, I made a mistake. At the time I was searching for a SCSI DVD
writer, as I wanted to have just a single drive in the machine. At the
time, those were rare and expensive.
O.K. For that, you want an ACArd bridge card to convert IDE to
50-pin SCSI. With that, you can mount an IDE DVD burner in the system
in place of the original SCSI drive. I have such a drive in my Sun
Blade 2000, and another one in a FlexiPack (like a UniPack, except that
it holds two drives). That one is connected via an ACard bridge card
which adapts to 68-pin SCSI instead of 50-pin. This particular ACard
can be a pain in the system, but outside with a 68-pin interface, it
works nicely.
The only problem is that while the IDE DVD-burners are quite
inexpensive, the ACard is something like $59.00 or so. :-)
Are those things any good? I remember when they first came out - sold
for hard disks rather than CD-Roms - I heard some complaints that they
were more trouble than they were worth.
I am using one quite frequently for a DVD burner mounted in my
SB-2000. It shows up as:
================================================== ====================
'_NEC ' 'DVD_RW ND-3520A ' '1.04' Removable CD-ROM
================================================== ====================
The main thing is to be sure to go to ACard's own site, and look for the
one which is 50-pin SCSI instead of 68-pin SCSI, at least if you intend
to use it as an internal drive.
I had a 68-pin one, which would not make a bootable DVD drive,
especially in the system, and it took forever to argue with the system
over whether to use narrow or wide SCSI, since both ends were
identifying as wide, but the internal connection to the DVD-drive was
only narrow SCSI. :-)
And right now, CDs suit my needs. The only reason a DVD burner might be
good is to back up the CDs of photographs I already have (they come on
CDs from the lab; I don't burn them myself). So far I've had no problems
with those CDs, but the oldest are over 5 years old now and I'm not sure
how long they'll last.
Understood.
I would think that some of those would be cheap enough to use
for the task. It saves a *lot* of CD swapping, and of waiting around
for the right time to swap when loading Solaris 10 (5 CD-ROMs or one
DVD-ROM. :-)
I even put a spare into an ancient SGI Indigo 2, and it works
fine with CDs and DVDs.
What do you think of the Indigo 2?
Slow once I'm using a Sun Blade 2000 with dual 1.2 GHz CPU
modules. :-) This particular Indigo 2 is the Teal colored one, and
happens to have an unusual CPU -- the R8000 -- only 75 MHz, but it can
do floating-point math as fast as integer math.
I was thinking in comparison to a Sun Ultra 2? I figured at the time
that my free 2 x 300 MHz Ultra 2 was probably the better machine, but
was never quite sure. That bright purple case had an effect on my mind.
Remember -- this one was a 75 MHz CPU. About the only time it
*might* do better than the Sun Ultra-2 would be if you were doing
something which was almost exclusively *heavy* floating-point math.
That one had a separate floating-point processor which was as fast as
(or faster than) the integer math. I think that the SB-2K may well be
equally designed for very fast floating point.
I did have a Personal Iris for a while. Probably weighed about 80 lbs. I
gave it to a computer museum.
Got tired of heating the house with it?
Enjoy,
DoN.
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