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Here is a nice article on Irix for those interested in learning about the commercial *nix distribution used for graphics intensive work. The thing that interested me was how it was written from a linux users perspective.
http://www.users.fast.net/~kshuff/pictures/story.htm
It is reasonably academic, as it seems increasingly likely that SGI will replace Irix entirely eventually.
At the moment they are selling Intel-based workstations with Linux or Windows NT - which are essentially normal PCs but with a funky graphics subsystem. I believe they may also have IA64 systems - which will be running Linux.
So Irix is effectively for their high-end server systems and highly specialised systems only (Servers with lots of CPUs and/or clustering, and big graphics visualisation systems) - but it seems more and more likely this will dry up eventually.
Their main markets are military simulators and movie graphics - the latter of which has already largely switched to Linux on the server and is mostly switching to Linux or NT on the workstation. The military will follow eventually (but very slowly)
After that, there will be no point in them having Irix any more - as once their servers are their only business, they will probably abandon Irix altogether. Irix is a very weird and quite idiosyncratic Unix - and its only real strength is in multimedia. However once this is removed, there will be nothing left.
SGI are quite a long way down the road porting their APIs and other stuff to Linux (for example, xfs)
Thanks for the link ...I have had an Indy workstation for about a year now, But have not had the time to mess with it. I think it has 2 MIPS processors at 233mhz. It kicks butt on my Athlon 1.2ghz box. I just wish I knew more about how I could use it. It has an external CDROM an internal 1GB SCSI (not sure witch ver) , no floppy drive. I just wish that I could figure out how to make it work on my win2k/xp home network so I could get it on the internet as I don't know how to configure a modem on it yet. It came with a 20 inch Trinitron/SGI Monitor and an IndyCam web conferencing Camera.
Need something to do with your Indy workstation aeallison?
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/sgimips/
I looked all over the place for a version of linux for sgi machines, but I cant find it.