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eWeek on Linux
alexhmit01 writes "One of the better articles that I've read covering Linux in real deployments, eWeek has an article entitled, The state of Linux: Live free or die?, gives coverage of where Linux has improved in 2.4 and what it needs. It covers Linux's success as a web server, where it comes up short against other Unices, etc. It's a good read for the non-programmers in the Open Source Movement... for it focuses upon market adoption, not just technical capacity." Nothing exciting and new here, but its a nice little article, especially talking about whats new and wacky in the 2.4 kernel.
"Do you think a kernel branch could affect negatively"
"Linux caoul be "
"It's still lacks of"
Looks like they have major troubles with grammar/spelling too.
Best Slashdot Co
/me is fascinated...
That is a model I have never considered- the code used by real mission critical people, as in in the government and the firms that provide it.
I am not prying for classified information, so don't worry about that. I am wondering if you could say anything on the point of "open source culture" and how it would be impacted by a classified military culture?
You say your code is free as in beer and free as in open. It's also secret code, which means that only a few people can see it.
Does this mean that folks use the program who don't have the security clearance to see the code? If a user has a problem with the code, will the people with the clearance to respond on it work on it quickly? Or do bug fixes have to go through six months of government red tape?
Answer here, in email, or not at all as you see fit. Thank you,
-perdida
Goat sex free since 2001
My definition of "mission critical" is that the expense of down-time far outways the expense of the technology. Obviously we're thinking more in terms of money, but in some situations we're talking about lives too.
I once worked on a flight planning system for an airline. It's not the same as air-traffic control, we weren't responsible for preventing accidents, but without their flight plan the planes couldn't take off. The flight plans were prepared about 3 hours in advance. If there was ever an outage of more than three hours any planes currently on the ground would not be able to take off again. Gradually the entire fleet would be grounded and business would stop entirely after 15 hours or so.
The cost of that downtime was astronomical: salaries, ticket refunds, hotels for passengers, lost goodwill. We're talking millions of dollars per minute.
Needless to say, they weren't very price-sensitive when building their new flight planning system. A few million extra for added security wasn't considered a bad deal. That pretty much defines "mission critical" for me.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Those of us who are looking for jobs and use/love Linux care about market penetration. I personally find working with Linux much more fun and rewarding than aimlessly clicking boxes in Microsoft's server software. I personally am a Java developer, and with more market penetration comes more software offerings from the likes of IBM that make it easier for me to do get the job done using Linux and other open source products and not have to rely on Microsoft.
josh at shenknet dot com
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
I know Qt can handle unicode and Gtk+ somehow also supports it via <a href="http://www.pango.org">Pango</a>.<
Question: when is it going to be standard for desktop distributions?
Why is it that many people want Linux in order to control a starship ? OK, I can see many advantages over the competition, but first you have to have a starship to run Linux on.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
...being able to run the custom applications that ISVs as well as inhouse shops develop.
For example, many mid size shops use Borland RAD products to handle things that are specific to their site.
Kylix will help with porting Delphi/Object pascal apps over, and when C++ Builder gets released in Q2 (or thereabouts) even more shops will be able to offload tasks onto Linux.
The "big iron" enterprise apps need a stable platform if they are going to port. Stuff like CA and Peoplesoft makes needs a stable high availability, high resource platform to do their ports.
Hopefully, 2.4 is a solid step to providing a platform for that type of thing.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
"And if it works, people will die too -- just not our people."
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer this month publicly said that Linux was his company's greatest threat going forward.
Is that a head fake or a road map?
Should the Linux community even care? If everyone is so focused on bringing this OS to the masses, will the hobbyists support its ascent?
Dancin Santa
I'm sure they have a good point -- I wouldn't want to be putting Linux 2.4.x on a mission-critical system at the moment, though I wouldn't wait two years.
But do people really follow this? I mean, that stops you deploying Windows 2000 now. You could only just deploy Windows 98. It seems to me that it is silly to wait quite that long.
I mean, come on. Point-zero releases may not be stable enough for you but after a few bug fixes, why not evaluate the software for yourself? See if you find it stable enough. Chances are, there's a lot more useful technology integrated over the last two years.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
And here I thought it was an operating system!
You could do one for the Gartner group too. They're about as predictable.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
A couple months ago, I would have said you made all that up using big words...
But having just moved to Europe.. it's totally true!
The real point, and this has nothing really to do with technical issues...
When you are rolling out an application worth, say, a million dollars, and you have a multi-million dollar budget.. you don't fuck around. If Sun tells you 'we can spec teh equipment, install it, and it WILL work, adn our company will stand behind that 100%, and they have a PROVEN track record of such things.. THAT is a safe decision for a CTO guy.
If someone says 'Linux is reliable, lots of people use it.. blah-blah.. ' it's not the same thing.
If redhat were the size of sun, and was backing their distro, and their own hardware, then *maybe* it would be that way.
It seems like most of the article was about making an artificial distinction between "lowly consumer-level stuff" and Enterprise Level Computing, with the strong implication that Powerful Businessmen (the people interviewed: a vice president, a CTO, a chairman, a Data Center Manager, and, for some reason, an analyst) need Enterprise Level Computing, which Linux still doesn't do.
Shit, man, it works or it doesn't. Maybe (as the analyst lucidly pointed out near the end) the OEMs and ISVs need to put out ERP and CRM with the SMP and raw I/O that the 2.4 kernels can provide. Or you could just write me a check right now, sir, and I'll see that it gets done.
I like this article because it has hard facts and doesn't seem to have the standard media hype tone about how Linux will revolutionze the desktop, topple MS, take over the world, and declare world peace. (MS, on the other hand, would declare world FUD.)
Linux is a mighty fine OS, but there are others out there that people will still want to use. So may all *nix*es unite and take over the world *together*! Can we say... Beowulf? Or... MOSIX?
(just kidding...)
This was debated by Linus Torvalds (Linux and the Monolithic Kernel) and Andrew Tannenbaum (Minix and the Microkernel) back in 1992. You can read their debate here.
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Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
Funny, my company has been using Linux (and other free software) for mission-critical application in the enterprise for years. That includes all the stuff they mentioned - database, financial, CRM, and more. Linux does have a journaling filesystem as of 2.4.1, and it's actually had them for quite a while if you don't mind doing some kernel patching.
In fact, I would say that the only other platform that is as capable (and probably more so) that Linux in this regard is Solaris on Sparc hardware. Solaris has its own set of problems (mostly that it feels like an "old" UNIX to me, making it hard to develop on), but certainly is quite capable.
I guess these journalists (and the people they interview) just insist on handing hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars over to Sun and Oracle. That's fine, since the products they sell are good. But for young companies with a limited cashflow (as we were just a few short years ago), that's not an option.
In that case, Linux (or one of the free *BSDs) is your only choice.
A sysadmin in the article says,"I want wholehearted vendor endorsement and a couple of years of solid quality assurance testing by companies like Oracle [Corp.] before I allow Linux to take over my database server."
How you read this depends on your perspective. The sysadmin who said this thinks, "I want it in a box." Your experience is unimportant to him. The ZDNet reporter hears "vendor endorsment" and thinks of advert payments to ZDNet trumpeting some package.
It's all give and take. ZDNet convinces yet another group to sit contentedly, and their revenue continues to flow. Why would they advocate or even believe in anything else? It will go on until something else takes over. Insects do not believe in winter.
Sitting here on Slashdot, I wonder what that might be? Could it be peer reviewed, moderated, and modified content?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It says what every single article about linux says every time, say, a new kernel comes out?
1) Linux is much more stable than comparable Windows solution for insert something you want a computer(s) to do.
2) However, it still doesn't have all of the security features that Sun or *BSD has.
3)There are assorted problems with kernel x.x, which will be fixed soon with the release of the next kernel.
And before you say, "It's moving up to mission critical!" Tell me what the heck does mission critical mean, anyway? I for one think that the artificially imposed heirarchy over what is "mission critical" or not causes the problems that both the producers of computer services and the consumers of those services feel. For instance, it is very mission critical to keep the cookies rolling in, so you can incessantly market to a new stream of hapless email addresses, but it is NOT mission critical to respond to the angry email from these same addresses when a user encounters a compatibility problem or has damaged equipment, etc.
The mission is profit, or at least survival, keeping that cash flowing. THAT is what is mission critical.
I would think that some journalism which steps outside the boilerplate model mentioned above, something that would actually relate these firms' ACTUAL priorities to their choice of operating systems, software, hardware, etc., all of these debates we have here at
Goat sex free since 2001
Linux comming to the masses is something that the community has yet to address, currently the community (excluding companies) develops Linux kind of on its own time frame and for its own purposes. Like someone once said in a post - Programmer A releases a program that works for him. Programmer B tries it out and adds 50%, Programmer C uses it and C patches it another 10%.
People so far or at least hobbyists usually do things for their own reasons. (i.e. rarely go the extra mile)
However much more is starting to be expected. The article states: "Beyond the 2.4 kernel, Linux developers are asking for the incorporation of a journaling file system, more work on Linux clusters and on the scheduler, additional scalability, high availability, internationalization, and printing and systems management." - Linux developers want more... and they may not be willing to work for it.
Given that the Linux community is well organized and making significant progress, currently I think that their be no problem meeting demands of users and the masses, more people will simply join in and help out. One thing to watch though is what the opposition does... generally the more dangerous a threat is to a company the tougher the resistance.
If Mr. Ballmer was serious about his statement perhaps the coders/linux hobbyists of the kenrel and whatnot should sit back and examine if they're in it for themselves or the masses and a long haul...
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
Sure, Redhat and the other commercial distros...
But this is an operating system, not a popularity contest.
Are you saying that the European standpoint is pragmatism, while the Americans are too idealistic? Like pre-Stalin and Lenin socialists? That American open source displays the idealism that will fade into cynicism and pragmatism as time marches on?
If all this is true, how is it affecting the open source movement? Is code being negatively affected by only using variable names from the Red Book? Is the code being made inefficient because the party leaders forbid the use of GOTOs? Is there code being supressed because the ideas are too dangerous?
Are you just saying that the leadership should start thinking about making money and listening to businesses? Or that they should wear suits and ties? Or get business cards and official titles?
I agree that the European view of today may be the American view of tommorrow, but I'm not sure how American ideals (whatever you see them as) is holding back Linux progress, or the European ideals will propel Linux forward. I'm interested in this discussion, but I need a little more than "Americans are different than Europeans, perhaps more youthfully idealistic. This might be a bad thing."
I feel the need to post in support of the original poster (or is that posterchild?). We are a Unix/Linux shop here. We have a rather nice server farm. Most of the stuff is Sun running either Solaris 2.6 or 8. We use Linux, but not as extensively as we'd like. Linux represents a cost savings for us for most things.
Reasons for this policy:
That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure that there's more.
It's interesting to speclate what a process, for example software design, looks in different environments- open and closed environments.
:)
Like the stuff about budgets. It's not like trotting out to a venture capitalist and raising funds.
You also rightly point out that one thing about something "classified" is you can't make a profit out of it the same way as if you are a private company designing some software for word processing, or something. I don't think you can put a dollar value on some forms of extreme security.
I am a big fan of rigorous testing, but that might bring in a different time table than ordinary software design and development would.
One could compare it to, say, a closed source company, who is keeping stuff secret for reasons of pure profit. They have an interest in licensing their code, on their terms, to as many sub-developers as possible so they can cover the market damn fast. which they did.
A government, designing classified software, mayhaps for the same thing. A word processor, perhaps. The thing might be designed to work on as few computers on earth as possible. But there is always a question about whether it is best to use ordinary commercial software, and protect information with encryption, or to produce "unique" software that can itself be enumerated and controlled.
well I am rambling.. amateur sociology.
Goat sex free since 2001
I still don't know where they got my email address; I assume it was from an old free macweek subscription. They sent a message claiming to be honoring my "request", and have steadfastly refused to remove me. I've complained several times, and I've complained to their upstream.
Today, I took another stab at their abuse@ and postmaster@ accounts--only to find that *both* bounce as nonexistant addresses.
I'm not sure what's left but ORBS and RBL.
With such a clearly demonstrated lack of understanding, listening to them on a technology issue would be like listening to Clinton on honesty, or Monica on chastity . . .
Linux is remarkable in part because for those of us who understand enough of it to make it productive, it has extraordinary powers in both areas. Assertions that it's not a desktop operating system usually mean actually that it's not a desktop operating system for everyone. The thing is, if the Linux programming community continues to move it towards being user-friendly for everyone, idiot to kernel hacker, will that necessarily result in a loss of performance/features/etc that Linux has inhereted from it's Unix roots?
I'd be interested to know what others think.
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Keep attacking good things as "communist"
KMSMA (WWBD?)
Unavoidable questions - questions for Linus and gang:
- Do you think Linux is ready for the enterprise?
- When are you going to start the new development branch?
- Do you think a kernel branch could affect negatively?
- Do you agree in that Linux is still not ready for supporting workloads required by applications like ERP...?
- What are your goals going forward?
- Do you think that those performance issues have been/will be resolved?
- Do you think Linux caoul be a Windows competitor in the desktop war?
- What do you mean with "World Domination"?
...
Unavoidable Expert/Journalist Comments in a Linux article.- Linux 2.4 in big leap in the field of a enterprise class OS.
- It's still lacks of security featurs as entreprise class Unices.
- It's still lacks, but improvements can be seen in every release, of the performance figures as enterprise class OSes for loaded web servers and multiples interfaces.
- There is still a way to go before it becomes a true mission-critical, enterprise-class...
- It's enterprise ready for certain applications.
- We welcome the developers efforts to make Linux more robust and scalable.
- It's still needed the support for journaling file system
- While a few IT managers are beginning to move critical applications... other don't dude...
- Linux, in its last reincarnation, has got a better support for SMP, storage and huge RAM demanded by enterprise class databases.
- With the open-source kernel, you can make changes to it so that it fit your needs.
- ...
--ricardosgis ddo ekil t'nod i