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IBM Will Include Red Hat On All Mainframes
John E. Cosgrove writes "I read in this article that IBM signed a deal with Red Hat to include RedHat linux on all of their mainframe servers. It's a little short, but worth the look."
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As I read the comments about what a crappy distro Red Hat is, and the 7.0 "fiasco", and how commercial Red Hat is compared to other distros, and brand name this-and-that, it becomes obvious that we're overlooking the obvious reason that IBM is working with Red Hat on this. Namely, that someone at IBM at some point decided that they were getting the best deal from Red Hat in terms of the combination of price and support. This decision is probably fairly unrelated to issues surrounding consumer-grade distributions for the x86 processor. Probably IBM could care less which brand of Linux they choose, since their decision does more for that brand than choosing a particular brand will help IBM sell this. Finally, Red Hat employs Alan Cox, who is a major figure in kernel development, which is the prime piece of any Linux distro that IBM is going to need (that and a compiler).
I do not have a signature
This is an easy one, backwards compatibility. Programs have been written to expect the system to work a certain way. How many programs have you seen break because the Windows directory isn't c:\windows\ How about Borland C++ 5.0). If programmers wrote their code strictly by the MS book, then the code might(probably not though) survive losing the drive letters. Same with the 8.3 limit. The system itself could probably handle long file names for system files, but old poorly written programs just might munch the names. It's safest for Microsoft to pull these features into new versions, than break a large base of existing software. It's baggage, but cause by bad decisions with DOS, not by a technological fault in Windows 2000.
treke
Personally I feel this is the only way to go about it.
:P
Linux is just the kernel.
GNU is just the compiler.
When people ask me what operating system(or I like to call it operating environment) I run I tell them that I run Debian. Of course there is Debian with various kernels and for different hardware architectures that aren't binary compatible, so sometimes I may say I run "Debian Woody Linux on i386" Of course i use GNU tools also but everyone knows that so adding it is superflous and just makes the name longer.
I fully support RedHat for trying to sell the qualities that make them unique among the Linux vendors.
I also like the open source work they have contributed. We use some of it in Debian. At school we use RedHat. It is pretty good. I only wish I had root access to make it better.
That Red Hat has performed so well, as to be accomodated as an option on the entire line of servers, by IBM no less, is a statement that Linux has arrived.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You can find out a LOT more information about this by checking out the article at http://industry.java.sun.com/javanews/stories/stor y2/0,1072,28830,00.html and http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2585 859,00.html.
This is hearsay from previous /. posts, but the only way to get similar results from a HA cluster...
/., and finding than 1 IBM mainframe, the S390 I think, can run some 1300 copies of Linux reasonably, though I may get the number wrong. That would mean a price of about $400 per running copy of Linux(which translates to 1300 $400 PCs)
Is to run something like a cluster of over 1k machines, I think.
I remember reading about price/performance numbers, and doing some quick math on
So the mainframe, for some purposes, is *cheaper*, more reliable, has more bandwidth, has better IO, is more configurable, has less complexity, and is much niftier. Not to mention easier to manage than 1k machines in some room somewhere!
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
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!
PowerX isn't part of the PowerPC family. PowerPC was based loosely on IBM's Power architecture. Then IBM came out with the Power2 and Power3 architectures (based on its Power architectune) which are not 100% compatible with PowerPC. They do, however share many common instructions between them, but there are PowerPC instructions that won't work on a Power CPU, and there are Power instructions that won't work on a PowerPC. (see the GCC info page for more info.)
I've heard that IBM has been working on a Linux port for their 64-bit PowerX machines. They already have a port for their 32-bit machines.
BTW, Debian also has a PPC port.
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.
Tripe! Did it ever occur to you that companies provide support because they get hurt in the market place if they do not? Suing might play a role, but it's a very small one.
Companies want support, not the right to sue. Support comes in all different kinds of shades and colors. Don't assume that the right to sue == good support, or that support = good support.
If that's what you base your investment decisions on ("survival") then I don't want to see your portfolio. Anyways, i'm skeptical about Red Hat. I question their ability to produce add a lot of value to Linux under GPL. I question their ability to provide support....lot's of questions.
- Joe
-Joe
The title says it all, baby.
I hope it's not RedHat 7.0 -- unless you're interested in watching dozens of RedHat instances die randomly.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Why get a mainframe... can someone tells me what makes them so much better? I know there are FAR more reliable... but they also cost a great deal more... why not get a HA Cluster?
Just wondering... beucase I goto a school where we do JCL and mainframe shit all the time...
Peace out.
I wonder if IBM will use RH 7.0 as their release version? That would be great for creating positive first impressions of Linux for corporate types !
enough is too much
Actually a very good chance, from what I've seen the majority of the linux/390 mailing list thinks this is the way to go. s/390 has a completly different memory management system and linux supports it very poorly. By forking development on that end can continue faster, than someday perhaps be merged back in. Right now work is hindered by Linus who (rightfully so) is concerned about the impact that s/390 related changes would have on other plaforms.
Finkployd
You will have the support of SuSE, Turbolinux and now the latest addition RedHat. Any distro that considers itself a server contender is going to want on board...
I hope you are aware of what the next generation mainframes are all about. IBM last week decided to rebrand the whole server lineup as eServer. So what used to be the S/390 is now the zSeries of eServer. The newest model which should be there in time for Christmas if you order now is the z900. Check it out at http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserv er/ zseries/
This is going to rock and Linux is going to be one of the first OS's that will take full advantage of it's 64-bit goodness! With the 2.4 kernel (which we also will hopefully have for Christmas) the 16 processor (+4 others dedicated to I/O or clustering or hot spares) SMP design is going to set some new benchmark records for Linux scalability.
Worth every penny. Believe me this is the dream machine. And Linux is going to achieve it's server destiny here.
"a powerful and unexpected ally..."
Now I can't tell my P's from by B's...sorry about the accidental shouting.
zSeries = S/390
pSeries = RS/6000
iSeries = AS/400
zSeries = ? (Maybe the NUMA systems)
What this really means is that Linux will run on all of these platforms. The S/390 port was done mostly in house. The AS/400 port is based on the LinuxPPC work as is the RS/6000 port. More work had to be done on the AS/400 port since the hardware is different than a 6000, although the processors are the same. I would really like to see Linux running on a 400, the hardware kicks ass.
First they have poor sales of Win2k, ME, or whatever they call it due to the reputations they've built screwing people.
Next we see that stupid "naked pc" page. All that tells me is that dealers are looking to get out from under the MS thumb, and are -gasp- considering other OS options. Hopefully, the trickle will become a flood and the extortion of one copy of Windoze per PC will die.
Now IBM has taken this up a Linux with their mainframes. Sure, we've seen the demos with thousands of virtual machines and we know that some of the bussiest sites run Linux (HOTMAIL), but now PHB will know it. It's going to come to him in glossy adds with great graphic design and skinny young people, circus acts, blah, blah, blah. PHB might even lean why free software works and embrace it (well, ok maybe not) stanger things have happened.
Die you source code horading, lawsuit wielding monster you, die! May the sins of your past haunt you. IBM may get the last laugh on you yet, Bill Gates. For every user that's lost work to a format change or broken program, for every poor sucker that thought it was cool that you could "pirate" windows so easily only to suffer it, for every legitimate user who has suffered the same after plunking down hundreds of dollars a year trying to keep current, for every dealer forced to carry that bloatware against their will, Die Bitch Die!!
Poster is mild mannered in real life. He is, however, still angry that his quick window routines and FORTRAN were broken between Windows 93 and 95. He also feels for all those people screwed much worse than himself by Visual Basic. He also has to use NT at work, and hates it. OK, that's enough now.
Last week, IBM said it will overhaul its entire line of servers and mainframes under the brand name eServer
Note the key phrase last week. I have no idea why, but a number of us submitted the news item last week on slashdot and it got rejected.
Guess it's not news until it's stale: right?
Oh, news flash, Al Gore will debate George Whats-My-Sign Bush last week.
And in further news, Slobodan Milosevic is certain that he can stay in power. Oh, wait, he's been overthrown already.
Never mind.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
The RS/6000 does indeed run PowerPC chips, and recent AS/400 have as well. They used to use in-house IBM CISC processors. Most of the 6000's will run Linux, (I've used Yellowdog to test a couple B50's), but the PPC AS/400 is pretty damn well unsupported at this point. I've heard hearsay stories of IBM demo'ing a few running Linux on the bare hardware, but have not seen it. The CISC machines are not running Linux at all, but talk of a port to their HAL of the MMU-less Linux variant found on the Dragonball processors was running around the mailing lists for a while.
Hard to find HW info on? Whaddya wanna know?
.sig: Now legally binding!
Oh please, it'll be an option.
Do you really think they are going to give up the most reliable OS in history?
Windows uptime measures in days
Linux uptime measures in years
MVS uptime measures in decades
:)
Finkployd
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.
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
What is the point of this? Whilst the IBM Unix's may not be the most popular, they are still damn solid and there are ALOT of applications out there that just plain won't run on linux (and perhaps won't due to age and such). The way I see it, if this rumour were to turn out to be true, IBM would be shooting themselves in their foot as customers will look at it and say "Hell, I can get an RH system anywhere, and for a helluvalot less" Sure, it may not have the same guts in there, but you won't be paying nearly as much. Would someone drop $15,000-$20,000 on an RS/6000 (which my company is currently looking at) when they find out it comes with a free OS? Hell no, I will put together my own dual or quad intel box and pop FreeBSD (or atleast Debian) on it and take the rest of the cashish and head on vacation. Or maybe a dual/quad G4 on OSX
Something about this just don't sound right. IBM can't be that friggen stupid. Linux support on lowend servers would be great, but I am not willing to set my entire network up on Linux *JUST* yet.
tinfoilmedia
Professionally, I'm still reeling from how IBM shafted CompUSA on the POS terminals (Point of Sale or Piece of S@&#, translate it as you will). These things were basically dumbed down Aptivas with a fancy keyboard (K6-2 300, 32 MB of RAM, NT4 SP4, POS terminal programmed in Java and executed through JGui). Boy, those things are laggy as hell. The keyboard has an acceptance rate of the PCJr. keyboard, the barcode scanner won't scan serial numbers, the 2x20 LED display was the only useful output of the computer (the monitor just shows an overview of the receipt and incessant ads), the printer stutters due to the Javalag(TM), the cash drawer has a 2500ms lag, and the check printer sometimes eats checks! Furthermore, the system setup looks as improvised as a Tinkertoy: once NT is booted, an FTP session starts to download the ad JPEGs, then an unknown piece of hardware is detected (every time, and every time I have to close that damned window without a mouse), then the "SurePay" program starts up. I wrote a sternly worded comment to IBM; after which I was almost fired for opposing a contractual partner, therefore jeopardizing the bottom line. The terminals were Y2K compliant, but they certainly aren't Win2K compliant, so what happens if they need to be upgraded? Guess we'll have to contract out to a POS company that doesn't suck as much as IBM.
DISCLAIMERS: Javalag(TM), Java®, and Sun® are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc., LLC, CRAP, ETC, Ltd. in trust.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I can't believe you used "mainframe" and "hip" in the same thought :)
Finkployd
Mainframe Systems Programmer
Or, just read a Slashdot response to the errant Slashdot story.
I do believe there were many posts at the time (on Slashdot, no less) pointing out the same gross errors in fact and problematic reporting. Why go elsewhere when you can get your criticism at home?
Although I personally think that Slackware is a superior distro to RedHat, you have to look at it from the corporate point of view. When I first decided to try linux, I went to a local computer store where they had a bunch of those "budget" CDs, and looked over the options for linux. The two main ones were Redhat and Slackware. I, being unexperienced with linux at the time, chose redhat, because I simply liked the name better! CEO's wouldn't like to run a business dependent on something called "Slackware". Plus, the corporate support that Redhat offers probably is another plus in using them, but on purely technical merits, I think that slackware would be the best choice.
Of course, others would like to debate that with me...
-MSD.dyndns.org
"Sucks to your ass-mar"
Your quad intel box will not have anywhere near the reliability of a true piece of hardware like an IBM or HP server. These guys use redundant power supplies, ECC memory, redundant SCSI busses (not sure linux can support these, though), etc. The newer server offerings support hot swap of components to minimize system downtime. All of this, and at the same time a good system busses (note plural!) with serious bandwidth and a support network that understands a 2-hour response time.
By the time you build your intel box with all of this, your price advantage evaporates.
Presumably he could have then installed Lotus Notes and brought IBM full circle, since they first started using Notes to get away from the mainframes.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I work for one now and let me tell you it sucks!
You work your guts out to see competitors with inferior products kill you in the market, you tell people what industry you work in and they say "oh, I didn't know company X did that", but most of all it sends moral to the shit and good people leave.
I'm glad Redhat understands the need for branding, if nothing else it means the distro I'm using now IS going to be around in 5 years (and despite the opinion on /. it is a fine distro).
Having the the technical goods is the start of the process, not the end.
Cheers
When it absolutely positively has to be there.
Gee, anybody think this IBM/Red Hat partnership mighta had something to do with last week's story, "Red Hat Abandons Sparc"? Nah, IBM doesn't think of Sun as a competitor, do they?
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/linux config/
So IBM's own webpage lists the price as about $500 per copy of Linux installed on their S/390, with about 2500 copies of Linux being run, for a base cost of $1.2M.
This is a hard number that *IBM* is providing on their site, not just educated guesses on my part. They are actually willing to support that many copies, evidently.
The price varies with how buff a machine you want, I assume, but again, this is one of my baseless guesses.
Are we at least willing to grant that IBM does have expertise in their own hardware, and that their numbers aren't baseless and useless?
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
I don't know if this is still true, but last I heard IBM is not giving it all away to the Linux community. Aren't the sound systems in their ThinkPad notebooks still that proprietary thing tied in with the modem that doesn't work with Linux? Maybe not, but I've heard that sound won't work for this reason and IBM refuses to release specs.
Sure, it's great that they are offering linux on their mainframes, but it would be nice to be able to have a choice between major OEMs for Linux laptops (Dell is the only one I would fully trust, and the small linux-only companies are *expensive*!)
# debian/rules
Red Hat is the most commercial of all distros, and arguably the best tuned to servers. I mean, what other distro can you buy at Best Buy with almost everything you need to set up an e-buisness webserver? Granted, it's way too expensive to buy the boxed professional edition, but it comes with support, and that's what companies like.
Does that mean that Linux will be the only choice, or that they will be Linux-capable?
Micro$oft(R) Windoze NT(TM)
(C) Copyright 1985-1996 Micro$oft Corp.
C:\>uptime
This will allow mainframe users to create different services on thier servers without tring to port it that platform. Also it would cutback on amount of resources needed to maintian it.
It's appropriate that this is with IBM - another company that got big on selling its name, regardless of whether they provided any compelling technical advantage over their competitors.
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
An important factor is that we have developers in different areas (compiler, kernel, glibc) and thus can offer porting to new platforms etc. Noone else can offer the same.
Another is of course the level of support Red Hat and partners can provide.
Linux for System/390 can run native, without a hypervisor. Most of us mainframe geeks think there are serious advantages to running it under VM (the hypervisor), but if you happen to find a box by the side of the road and don't have the bucks for software, Linux will run on it.
Linux on a huge 512 processor with a terabyte of ram big blue iron clad warship of death taking up a room by it self... let me clean myself...
This is great for Linux. This is the best news about Linux I have heard since I started playing around with Linux in 1996.
With this, out the door with "Linux is a toy os." Along with "Linux is for small machines". Considering all the other UNIX and Win2k, I could see a point where you by the best hardware you can, and put linux on it, and know it's going to work. No more of this OS for Hardware stuff, Linux for everything!!
OS's is to computer as gas for cars. Think about, when cars were first invented, you had crude oil, gasoline, diesel, steam, wood, and coal powered "cars". Of course, some rich guy had billions control over the oil refining plants, so we use gasoline now.
The expection here is Linux is free and open. Anyone with skill can do what ever they want with it. Now, I not going to say linux will power 90% of every computer on the planet, but look like it might be the diesel of the automotive world powering the big trucks and cheap cars.
MarNuke
Last week, IBM said it will overhaul its entire line of servers and mainframes under the brand name eServer After reading /. for just a little while, and seeing tons of posts contradicting this story, I'm left wondering: When is Slashdot going to get a story right, on time? Seriously, I think that I'm about ready to switch to reading my local newspaper. At least the stories are current, and they occasionally walk them by a fact-checker. Please UP THE QUALITY...
read the frickin article. it says "will offer" not "will include".
didn't think so... Add it to the list: reliability, included source, no legal hassles, no license fees, no viruses, no snoopware, no untrusted code...
IBM is turning out to be one pretty hip company. Java, Linux, Thinkpads, Mainframe. So strange that this is the same company Steve Jobs called 'evil empire'. My how things change!
See this kuro5hin thread.
/. was including all apps, all versions, and included feature enhancement requests etc. Basically whoever did the search on Bugzilla didn't know how the search form worked and didn't bother to figure it out. (Giving the benefit of the doubt that they were not being malicious.)
Specifically:
A quick check on RedHats Bugzilla the day of the Slashdot post revealed something on the order of 120 bugs relating to RH7 directly. Most were low severity. Even today checking RedHat 7 with all packages only yeilds 269 bugs total (no enhancement or translation requests).
The 2500 bugs quoted in
The posting up there is relevant (if mis-sectioned maybe even belonging on scoop) because this whole episode shows that these community news/discussion sites have some pull in real world news and events. The story there did some real damage to Red Hat (at least PR wise) and it's basis was in inaccurate data that could have been easily checked (took me 2 minutes) If it had been checked at all (by the original poster or by the reviewer) it would have been prevented. It is something that must be considered when designing site review and submission issues as well as the whole culture bit. I think in this case slash should help Red Hat cover the PR damage done either via a story, interview or retraction.
--
A bit needs to be said regarding this bit of "exciting" news. This article DOES NOT say that Red Hat will ship with every IBM mainframe. It says that Red Hat will work on those mainframes. Red Hat is actually far behind on this one. SuSE has run on every IBM offering including the S390 for at least 3 months. Just because Red Hat thinks this is exciting news doesnt mean it is.
F******* LOUDER! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! --Ozzy Osbourne