>>I saw the future. I thought that was how things was supposed to work. I have never experienced such a smooth and well running system ever since

Me too. Seeing the future was one of the more common sentiments expressed by people running IRIX, especially when there was enough gear available to exercise the better features.

In the later 90's we would break for 3D games with voice and video chat, yelling taunts and such asbif we were all in the same room.

Software manager was one of the better future features in my view. That thing was quite powerful!

Once, while doing the video render stunt I mention up thread, one machine ran out of space. Software manager [swmgr] paused, offered me the choice of changing what I wanted to install, the option to uninstall additional subsystems to free space, exit to a shell to do that manually, and or continue, all while another user was running the machine, busy doing CAD work, and without a reboot, or interrupting that user.

I specified more software to remove, swmgr finished up and it was go time! Easy Peasy.