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I'm really suprised none of the linux zealots have mentioned this yet, but one of the best uses a school could have for an old PC is to rip out the hard drive, hook that sucker up to a network, and use it as an X terminal thin client with its display managed by a bigger backroom server.

This is much more reliable and effective than you might imagine. Over 10baseT, X is plenty fast. An old pentium is more than enough power for an X server (even a 486 works very nicely, with a decent vid card). Eight or 16 megs of ram is enough. For the server, to run basic office and net apps you need much less power than you think, because most of the time the processor is sitting idle (what you really need is ram). Plus, you get all the additional benefits of thin-clients in their easier administration and much lower TCO. No more running around to Windows (or even Linux) PCs all over the school--you can forget they exist.

This is already quite a popular way of doing things in cash-strapped schools, and it's growing.

Be evangelized.

The biggest deployment of this kind I know of is in Largo, Florida, with 400 terminals. See also here, and here, aw heck just Google.

LTSP is a very popular package for serving mini X server distros to storage-less PSs over a network.

By the way, I've also been a beta tester of the system. The account is a full virtual hardware environment, with root access to your virtual machine. The whole thing runs under IBM's VM operating system which acts as a hypervisor like VMWare(tm) but with extremely low overhead because the S/390 CPU has better virtualization support in hardware than Intel does.

They are using SSH with hostkey authentication in addition to the login/password authentication. This is so that they can safely allow a direct root login remotely. You can (and will, if you're smart) also use IPCHAINS to create a personalized firewall on your virtual machine. Isolation from vm to vm is extremely good because of the hardware-assisted virtualization.

IBM would be the first to admit that the raw MIPS numbers of a mainframe, even a big one, don't compare to a huge cluster of RISC or Itanium boxes. The forté of a mainframe is I/O bandwidth and security, and they are marketing it as such. Big companies are finding that running Linux on the S/390 concurrently with their traditional mainframe applications allows a best-of-both-worlds integration that is otherwise very cumbersome and difficult. By the way, there is an internal bus-speed network within the mainframe chassis that carries TCP/IP traffic from vm to vm at gigaBYTE per second speeds. So if you have a few dozen virtual Linux servers communicating with one another and with OS/390 or VM/ESA mainframe apps via IP, network bottlenecks are seldom a problem.

IBM's engineers have been very responsive in fixing bugs and listening to suggestions, and they've set up a discussion e-mail list with several of their engineers lurking and posting. This is a very new thing for IBM, and there will inevitably be glitches, but give it half a chance. As for the coolness factor, that's certainly there but it's not what IBM is pushing. It's not fair to judge this offering based on whether it does a great job of running seti@home or Quake. Judge it on whether it's useful as a porting lab for Open Source applications and for IBM to learn about hosting huge numbers (tens of thousands) of simultaneous Linux instances. They have kernel gurus working on performance issues and are contributing what they learn back to the kernel team.

Incidentally, for those who have the IBM == big_company == bad_motives mentality, you might be surprised to learn just how many internal hoops had to be jumped to make this happen. Those hoops were jumped by a team of mainframe geeks who think Linux is way cool. Companies are made of real people, and they aren't all selfish jackasses just because they work for a big company. Does IBM hope to sell iron? You bet. Just like any other business. And while they're doing it in this particular way, they are causing some enormous customers to quit ignoring Linux and take us all seriously. How is that a bad thing?

Note: This post is my personal opinion, and I don't speak for IBM or for my current employer.

Sun said last week that it suffered lower-than-expected sales and net income dropped 73 percent to $136 million

It is clear to me that Sun is far too arrogant to consider anything besides their proprietary Solaris platform (and don't get me started on the SCSL license. Solaris is still proprietary!) a "real" OS. For example, one Sun employee says that "enterprise-class Linux is not ready for the data center, and it will be several years, at best, until this changes". (Look here here.)

Until Sun gets rid of their notion that Linux is somehow a toy OS, a notion that caused their sales to drop 73 percent, I do not think the Linux and open source community should in any way assist Sun. The face that IBM makes a far superior Java VM for Linux than Sun does speaks volumes about each company's committment to Linux.

- Sam

It is clear to me that Sun is far too arrogant to consider anything besides their proprietary Solaris platform (and don't get me started on the SCSL license. Solaris is still proprietary!) a "real" OS. For example, one Sun employee says that "enterprise-class Linux is not ready for the data center, and it will be several years, at best, until this changes". (Look here here.)

Until Sun gets rid of their notion that Linux is somehow a toy OS, a notion that caused their sales to drop 73 percent, I do not think the Linux and open source community should in any way assist Sun. The face that IBM makes a far superior Java VM for Linux than Sun does speaks volumes about each company's committment to Linux.

- Sam

You have a Dell 5450 and you want to run Linux 2.4 with Oracle? That's a good combo because Dell and Oracle have teamed up to do database serving on Linux. Look at the links below and you'll see what I mean.

"Dell Computer and Oracle agreed Wednesday to establish a Linux center in Austin, Texas... Dell will use the facility, which is scheduled to open in the spring, to test and tune Oracle databases running on Intel-based systems running Linux. Oracle also agreed to use Dell's servers and storage products for building the Oracle 9i database on Linux, the companies said." CNet News

"Oracle has announced all of its major Internet Platform software products on Linux, including Oracle8i(TM) Release 3, the latest version of its database; Oracle9i(TM) Application Server; and Oracle JDeveloper with Business Components for Java and Oracle Forms, two popular Oracle application development tools. In August 2000, Oracle announced an industry first with the shipment of the first enterprise-edition application server on Linux. Oracle adds to its firsts with Linux with the addition of Oracle Parallel Server and Oracle Internet File System." eltoday

Use 2.4, use that SMP and let's see if 2.4 is up to the job. Now you'll be able to convince those who say linux is not ready for production environments. Btw, don't listen to that guy about using win2k. He's an AC. Microsoft is starting to spread some serious FUD now that they take Linux seriously. I'm not really into the nix vs. ms war, but damn, Microsoft is obviously taking some notice. If anything, do as he said and dual boot your system. If win2k beats out Linux 2.4 in all aspects, then by all means use win2k instead. Somehow, I don't think that will be the case. Who knows? Maybe you've been destined by the Gods to run the first benchmarks.

I have read a lot of material from Microsoft that is directed at Linux. Various Microsoft employees have said to the effect, Linux is not ready for the enterprise, it doesnt scale, major players don't support it, It's not really free, etc... Well, I did some research and while I see some of Microsofts points, the majority of their rhetoric is either pure FUD or libelous marketing because that's the only thing Microsoft can do now. Microsoft can't buy Linux, can't "embrace and extend", can't buy a company and put it out of business, and basically can't do anything. I will now list a series of excerpts from various articles suggesting that linux is ready for prime time. I have also put in the links if you want to read the whole article. Here are some strong backers of Linux and various contributions and/or excerpts:


IDC
has predicted that Linux will hold 38 percent of the market by 2004. Interestingly enough, Microsofts group products manager, Doug Miller, claimed that recently released numbers from IDC System Software Research show that "Linux growth in server OS share has been flat for two quarters, and Unix and Novell continue to fall." Even more interesting is that IDC manager, Al Gillen, would not confirm Miller's analysis. Wired News

IBM
Big Blue committed to spending $300 million on Linux services over the next three years. IBM has already committed to investing $1 billion in Linux over the next 12 months. President and COO, Sam Palmisano, said "IBM has made our choice....we put a significant amount of IBM's future prosperity behind Linux. We don't invest a billion dollars casually. Lou [Gerstner] and I don't write those checks without, shall I say, some engaging meetings." Big Blue also unveiled Linux-based network processor software development tools and services for ISPs and networking equipment vendors, including:

Domino Workflow on Linux -- software which enables customers to build, modify and improve business processes like employee hiring and CRM by streamlining and automating interactions

Plans to expand Linux support for Tivoli Systems management software

IBM Director for advanced systems management software available on Linux for the IBM eServer xSeries product line, including a "self healing" feature to predict server failures

Availability of the NetVista Thin Client, the N22001, running Linux

Linux-certified IntelliStation Z Pro workstations based on Intel's new 64-bit Itanium processor.

Citing such real-world Linux customers as Weather.com, Shell Oil, and National Center For Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Palmisano said people who doubt that the operating system can scale to the biggest of applications are just wrong. Weather.com, one of the Web's most popular sites, supports anywhere from 5 million to 27.5 million page views per day running Linux and can scale even higher to 40 million per day, according to the company's CTO Mark Ryan. Techweb or eltoday

Oracle
Has ported Oracle 8i already to Linux. They recently released "Oracle Internet File System" and "Oracle Parallel Server" for Linux. If this isnt a major move by a major company then I don't know what is. Databases need to scale and thus if Linux can scale then Microsoft is full of it... Read on. "Oracle Parallel Server is the most mature and trusted high-availability database technology available for the Linux platform. It provides sub-minute failover capability, allowing Linux environments to achieve significantly improved levels of application and data availability. Oracle Parallel Server allows applications running on any server in a cluster instant access to all data in a database, and will support up to a 4-node, 8-way cluster." Hello Microsoft do you see this?

"Oracle has announced all of its major Internet Platform software products on Linux, including Oracle8i(TM) Release 3, the latest version of its database; Oracle9i(TM) Application Server; and Oracle JDeveloper with Business Components for Java and Oracle Forms, two popular Oracle application development tools. In August 2000, Oracle announced an industry first with the shipment of the first enterprise-edition application server on Linux. Oracle adds to its firsts with Linux with the addition of Oracle Parallel Server and Oracle Internet File System." So much for the myth of no vendor backing. eltoday

SGI
Is looking at linux as the future. Much of SGI's work is underground and less advertised. Much of it is kernel level enhancements, such as scalability, NUMA, big memory support, etc... SGI has released several of it's graphical products for linux such as, Open Inventor, Open GL Performer, and many other high end development tools. In the filesystem arena, XFS is in stable beta and is very promising for mass storage management and reliability. Open Source at SGI

Dell
"Dell Computer and Oracle agreed Wednesday to establish a Linux center in Austin, Texas... Dell will use the facility, which is scheduled to open in the spring, to test and tune Oracle databases running on Intel-based systems running Linux. Oracle also agreed to use Dell's servers and storage products for building the Oracle 9i database on Linux, the companies said." CNet News

Not enough corporate backers? Think again. Here are some other companies who have started partnerships with linux companies, cooperated, released specs, or released products for linux: Informix
Compaq
HP
Sun
Cisco
AMD
Intel
IDG
Adaptec
O'reilly and Associates
Nokia
Tivo
NeTraverse Inc.
3dfx
Nvidia
Creative
this list goes on and on......

I have read a lot of material from Microsoft that is directed at Linux. Various Microsoft employees have said to the effect, Linux is not ready for the enterprise, it doesnt scale, major players don't support it, It's not really free, etc... Well, I did some research and while I see some of Microsofts points, the majority of their rhetoric is either pure FUD or libelous marketing because that's the only thing Microsoft can do now. Microsoft can't buy Linux, can't "embrace and extend", can't buy a company and put it out of business, and basically can't do anything. I will now list a series of excerpts from various articles suggesting that linux is ready for prime time. I have also put in the links if you want to read the whole article. Here are some strong backers of Linux and various contributions and/or excerpts:


IDC
has predicted that Linux will hold 38 percent of the market by 2004. Interestingly enough, Microsofts group products manager, Doug Miller, claimed that recently released numbers from IDC System Software Research show that "Linux growth in server OS share has been flat for two quarters, and Unix and Novell continue to fall." Even more interesting is that IDC manager, Al Gillen, would not confirm Miller's analysis. Wired News

IBM
Big Blue committed to spending $300 million on Linux services over the next three years. IBM has already committed to investing $1 billion in Linux over the next 12 months. President and COO, Sam Palmisano, said "IBM has made our choice....we put a significant amount of IBM's future prosperity behind Linux. We don't invest a billion dollars casually. Lou [Gerstner] and I don't write those checks without, shall I say, some engaging meetings." Big Blue also unveiled Linux-based network processor software development tools and services for ISPs and networking equipment vendors, including:

Domino Workflow on Linux -- software which enables customers to build, modify and improve business processes like employee hiring and CRM by streamlining and automating interactions

Plans to expand Linux support for Tivoli Systems management software

IBM Director for advanced systems management software available on Linux for the IBM eServer xSeries product line, including a "self healing" feature to predict server failures

Availability of the NetVista Thin Client, the N22001, running Linux

Linux-certified IntelliStation Z Pro workstations based on Intel's new 64-bit Itanium processor.

Citing such real-world Linux customers as Weather.com, Shell Oil, and National Center For Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Palmisano said people who doubt that the operating system can scale to the biggest of applications are just wrong. Weather.com, one of the Web's most popular sites, supports anywhere from 5 million to 27.5 million page views per day running Linux and can scale even higher to 40 million per day, according to the company's CTO Mark Ryan. Techweb or eltoday

Oracle
Has ported Oracle 8i already to Linux. They recently released "Oracle Internet File System" and "Oracle Parallel Server" for Linux. If this isnt a major move by a major company then I don't know what is. Databases need to scale and thus if Linux can scale then Microsoft is full of it... Read on. "Oracle Parallel Server is the most mature and trusted high-availability database technology available for the Linux platform. It provides sub-minute failover capability, allowing Linux environments to achieve significantly improved levels of application and data availability. Oracle Parallel Server allows applications running on any server in a cluster instant access to all data in a database, and will support up to a 4-node, 8-way cluster." Hello Microsoft do you see this?

"Oracle has announced all of its major Internet Platform software products on Linux, including Oracle8i(TM) Release 3, the latest version of its database; Oracle9i(TM) Application Server; and Oracle JDeveloper with Business Components for Java and Oracle Forms, two popular Oracle application development tools. In August 2000, Oracle announced an industry first with the shipment of the first enterprise-edition application server on Linux. Oracle adds to its firsts with Linux with the addition of Oracle Parallel Server and Oracle Internet File System." So much for the myth of no vendor backing. eltoday

SGI
Is looking at linux as the future. Much of SGI's work is underground and less advertised. Much of it is kernel level enhancements, such as scalability, NUMA, big memory support, etc... SGI has released several of it's graphical products for linux such as, Open Inventor, Open GL Performer, and many other high end development tools. In the filesystem arena, XFS is in stable beta and is very promising for mass storage management and reliability. Open Source at SGI

Dell
"Dell Computer and Oracle agreed Wednesday to establish a Linux center in Austin, Texas... Dell will use the facility, which is scheduled to open in the spring, to test and tune Oracle databases running on Intel-based systems running Linux. Oracle also agreed to use Dell's servers and storage products for building the Oracle 9i database on Linux, the companies said." CNet News

Not enough corporate backers? Think again. Here are some other companies who have started partnerships with linux companies, cooperated, released specs, or released products for linux: Informix
Compaq
HP
Sun
Cisco
AMD
Intel
IDG
Adaptec
O'reilly and Associates
Nokia
Tivo
NeTraverse Inc.
3dfx
Nvidia
Creative
this list goes on and on......

The Reuters author appears to have got it slightly wrong. IBM have been shipping DB2 and several other applications for Linux for some time now. The real news is that IBM are now shipping and supporting it not only on Intel-based clusters, but also on multiple VM instances of Linux on big iron. Enterprise Linux Today explains it better here.

This is a follow-on from IBM's recent announcement of a significant win at Telia, the Swedish telecomms conpany. Telia tossed out a room full of Solaris servers (the exact number seems to vary between articles), and replaced it with one big fault-tolerant hunk of IBM, running multiple Linux VMs.

The term "VM" normally makes one think of Java, but IBM has been doing VMs for a long time. Their mainframe HW lets you runs multiple simultaneous instances of OS, each called a Virtual Machine. You can take down and restart VMs without affecting its neighbor VMs: very handy for 24x7 ops. Each VM gets a dedicated slice of storage and memory, but can share HW infrastructure like I/O.

Until now, you had to use IBM OSes to do this, e.g. VM/VMS, aka OS/390. Now you can do it on Linux. If I were an ISP/ASP, I would find this very interesting. Bravo Alan Cox for making this happen.

See this link. SGI had a cluster of 8 dual Itanium systems with Myrinet on the floor of Supercomputing 2000, last month. I know because my code was one of the ones they were demonstrating on it; they've loaned us (OSC) 4 dual Itanium boxes and Myrinet to do porting and development on.

My guess (given there's almost nothing to go in in the article) is that IBM will be selling the same Itanium workstation chassis that SGI, Dell, and everybody else will be.

--Troy

From what I understand, Linux just runs on top of the core OS. It doesn't actually run the entire system (I don't think that Red Hat Linux would be all that good at 640-way SMP). It's not like IBM is dumping their current OS, they're just adding Linux as a very good thing to run on the system -- up to 16 copies running all at once. This Enterprise Linux Today article has more info.

OK... I was going to flame on about mainframes vs. servers... but I checked the IBM site and they call 'em all "Enterprise Servers". OK. But then I read this article.

I love this period of system evolution!