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For all the talk of Linux, only 230,074 machines, or about 14.7 percent of shipments, were servers
running Linux. However, all of those Linux machines added up to a smidgen more than $1 billion
in sales for the quarter.Check more details here

According to the US-CERT announcement (Vulnerability note VU#713878), this problem was first published on july the 9th.... so it took MS 23 days to provide some "configuration changes" for a serious and critical problem.

So where is that Forrester report on how fast are linux distros to provide fixes to know problems vs MS. On average it seemed that MS is faster...

That report, like other "Windows vs linux" reports, has some methodological issues. There is a joint response from the distros... that in brief states that "Not all vulnerabilities have an equal impact on all users.", and that "For each vendor the report gives just a simple average, the "All/Distribution days of risk", which gives an inconclusive picture of the reality that users experience."

It seems to me that a security flaw that let people install key loggers in your machine, without you doing anything, and then sends tha info they harvest to some server in russia is a pretty BAD AND SERIOUS flaw!.

All this talk of opening up the Power 5 architecture just means to me that IBM is exiting the hard side of the manufacturing business and entering into being a designer and integrator; all the while and letting the poisonous drudge work to be done in various countries where public & workers rights are not well enforced.

IBM has moved assembly of Thinkpad , Netvista/Adaptiva (really Sanmima-SCI), and mid end Servers to outside the US to be a player. Now comes the egress of high end chips design work and assembly/integration.

Eventually IBM won't manufacture supercomputers in the USA at all but will design them, have some subcontractor build them then import them under the IBM name and sell them to the US GOV.

How many broken backs, destroyed environments, and tears for a cheap GFLOP or a MIP?

Linux Brings In $1 Billion in Revenue for IBM
This was reported on Slashdot. Additional stories: 1 2 3 4
Why do you think he just made up the number? You don't know, so noone else does either?

Apparently, someone else is mininformed as well. He does in fact appear to be related.

1st google on "hatch sco orrin"

1) Aim shotgun at foot
2) Pull trigger
3) ???
4) PROFIT!!!

IBM got its start providing IT services to the US Census beureau over 100 years ago. Today it is tightly integrated into the business and government fabric of nations around the world. IBM hires the best and brightest MBA and Law school grads every year into their corporate ranks. With that combination of inteligence and connectivity, IBM is not a force you want to fight directly.

Beginning this year, IBM has appointed a new Chairman. Mr. Palmisano has a history of supporting Linux.

This is all the motivation IBM needs to finish migrating its non-x86 platforms all the way over to Linux and completely dumping that antiquated "Unix" stuff.

I see a lot of job opportunities for Linux hackers opening up at IBM shortly. Especially for people with both Linux and IBM mainframe or PPC experience.

And Apple sold about $14.6 million in a market of $4.47 billion. That is about 0.00326% market share, in dollars. If every one is bought at the current cheapest price ($2799) that is about 5216 machines sold. Not impressive numbers at all.

Aix is a microkernel design, At the time I started using it ('93 / aix 3.1) this was 'common knowlege' and the basis was Mach. I beleive that's with extensive IBM mods. Yes I also remember the time when 'Workplace shell' was going to sit on a microkernel under aix, os/2 ... That was also the days of IBM's SAA :-).

You may also remember that the (ca) '96 timeframe was when IBM was offering it's microkernel investment to competitors. I (still) beleive that this was on the basis that they had migrated os/400 off of it's mini-platform onto RISC and DEC and HP were looking at the same problem with a need to move VMS and MPE respectively onto their RISC platforms.

I know for a fact that the AIX VM has the same design (benefits and limitations) that Hurd has been dealing with in their Mach underpinning. IT's an approach to the VM which to my knowlege is unique to Mach/osf1.

I'll offer the following assertions that AIX is based on Mach.

AIX/ESA, runs native on S/370 and S/390 mainframes, based on OSF/1. AIX [rs/6k] was to have been base for OSF/1 until Mach was chosen instead. I hope this subsection is converging : ref

The Mach microkernel technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University serves as the basis for IBM's microkernel work. On the Mach base IBM is experimenting with new ways of implementing low-end environments, developing stand-alone file servers, integrating multiple operating system personalities on a single computer, ... For instance, the low-end AIX implementation on Mach currently runs as a dominant personality and supports an environment for running DOS programs as a secondary personality. ref

MACH isn't a UNIX system either but is the basis for interesting UNIX kernel dev elopments. The DEC UNIX kernel is build on MACH (as well as the GNU Hurd, NextSt ep/OpenStep, Apple's forthcoming Rhapsody and IBM's OS/2 for the RS/6000). ref

IBM's own AIX operating system is based on a different Unix kernel, called the Mach kernel, which was created at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, but many of the layers of Unix functions that ride on top of this kernel are apparen tly based on Unix System V ref

See also e2[microkernel]

1. it usually takes a whole support team to install a geeks' workstation

1. Installation and maintenance requires 4-5 times the bandwidth a 'normal' OS would require

1. Linux was deliberately made completely incompatible and inoperatible with turnkey solutions like MS Exchange or MS SQL server. Investments in these products are therefore voided the minute you start rolling out Linux.

1. Applications developed in Perl or C, the languages of the linux community have proven to be slow,
2. unreliable, insecure and headaching complicated. Once developed and debugged, nobody is able to understand the code.

• All the 'geeks' wearing tux t-shirts are actually MIS support guys who are still studying for their MCSE exam.
  
• 'The screaming fast Linux machines at work' are actually refurbished workstations at a separated network segment, not allowed on the production network since every Linux (l)user seems to need nmap [insecure.org] to perform normal work-related computer operations.
  
• All the 'cool' Apache web servers are actually IIS machines with forged host headers. (yes, you can do that in IIS without recompiling anything. Heck, I lived for years without a C compiler and still do. )
  
  
• For the rare instance where a free UNIX is actually used in a production environment, management has smartened up and BSD is usually installed.