Software from SGI

SGI has a large range of free or evaluation software available for download. It can be found at http://www.sgi.com/software/

SGI also ships CDs with pre-compiled freeware with new systems. These freeware packages are regularly updated, and are freely available for download. They are tardist files, and so can be downloaded and installed with just one click.
The URL for SGI's freeware site is http://freeware.sgi.com

One word of warning - the freeware packages have been compiled with SGI's compiler. This means if you're using GCC, you may run into problems.
For example, if you have downloaded the perl freeware package, and then try and compile some perl modules using gcc, it will fail - perl will have been compiled using the SGI compiler, and will expect the same for the modules.
In these cases, you will need to remove the freeware packages, and compile the app from source.

It's also worth noting that there is a bug in recent versions of GCC, which appears in IRIX 6.2 and early versions of 6.5. Any program compiled with GCC that uses IP (for example, Apache or OpenSSH) will show all remote IPs as being 255.255.255.255. This isn't too helpful. At the moment, it seems that GCC 2.7.2 was the last version that didn't have problems with IRIX 6.2 - I would recommend installing this as your compiler. Recent versions of GCC 3 play nicely with IRIX 6.5.

SGI's Software Products page can be found at http://www.sgi.com/software/ - it has links and details for SGI's commercial software.

Other Software Links

• Blender is an excellent freeware 3D modelling software package. It is also available commercially. The URL for the homepage is http://www.blender.org/

• Douglas Scott has an excellent page of Audio and Music applications for SGI systems, originally at http://reality.sgi.com/dscott/audio.apps/
  I've setup a local mirror.

• Bill Henderson maintains a page of links to all sorts of Public Domain software, originally at http://reality.sgi.com/billh/anonftp/
  Please email me if you know where a copy of this now lives.

• Greg Lukomski maintains the excellent Unofficial Lightwave SGI Resource Guide at http://www.matchmove.com/sgi/sgi.html

• SiliconBunny's local mirrors have copies of some of the more popular software available - notably the various versions of Quake.

Games

When you've had enough in the office, or need a bit of light entertainment at home, have some fun with these:

• Quake and Quake II for IRIX used to be found at http://www.sgi.com/fun/freeware/games.html

• For those of us with slightly older machines, SGI Doom is also available at ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/doom/sgi/sgixdoom1.8.tar.gz
  Or, SGI have made it available from the same URL where Quake and Quake 2 can be found.
  Also check the local mirrors.

• Updated versions of BZFlag, which should come with IRIX 6.x, are available at the BZFlag home page - http://www.bzflag.org

• Links to more games can be found on the Serious Fun section of SGI's web site, at http://www.sgi.com/fun/freeware/games.html