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IBM Wants Linux
jsse writes "In a news conference IBM's senior vice president Steve Mills said 'the company will gladly drop its version of Unix from servers and replace it with Linux if the software matures so that it can handle the most demanding tasks.' Now the Giant, along with many other companies, jump to Linux bandwagon. The question is wether this bandwagon is capable of carrying a Giant that huge. Or the question is: can Linux beats AIX?"
This sounds to me like a challenge to the Open Source Community. Are we up to the challenge?
Reality has a liberal bias
If IBM wants Linux instead of AIX then they should assist in the development of the features they feel are missing...... isn't that the point of Open Source? I don't think anyone else will see this as a "challenge".
(Disclaimer: I know IBM is already investing heavily in Linux, so they may already be doing this).
I think IBM's doing this for one very good reason. The more linux hackers there are at home running linux on their personal boxes, the more workers there will be in the industry that say "IBM makes this big box that will do all we need for our web and/or accounting needs, and it runs an OS I already know."
Managers like to hear that so they don't buy something their IT people don't know how to run.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
The problem I see with this is that if a company as big as IBM wants to use something like Linux, they're going to want some kind of control of the direction it goes. Companies have been trying to get Linus to loosen his 'control' of the kernel for a while now. No company with smart leadership will drop support for a product that they have complete power over, in favor of an OS where they have little-to-no control over the direction that it takes.
However, we've seen that IBM has put a fairly good amount of time, money, and effort into making Linux compatable with their products, and their products compatable with linux itself. But so far, I just don't seem them dropping AIX for Linux anytime soon. Not until the control over the linux kernel becomes more decentralized.
Something tells me that Linux can be customized in such a way as to handle whatever AIX handles and possible more. But the question I have to ask in this is: Why? Is IBM really looking to cut ties with AIX? How could this be an advantage to IBM? Or their customers who have depended on AIX for a long, long time?
I suppose IBM may make some money upfront convincing their AIX clients to pay for a Linux conversion by convincing said clients that Linux has better support, the client won't be locked in to depending on IBM, stable, fast, blah blah blah. And I suppose IBM might save money in the long-term by having a larger talent pool from which to hire Linux gurus. But, unless someone else can give shed some light on something I just don't understand, this initiative to move AIX customers to Linux, while sounding like a great technical manuever, doesn't sound like a great business manuever.
My sigs always suck.
I think when IBM says they'll use linux if it "matures so that it can handle the most demanding tasks," they don't mean "you guys need to build pretty little admin GUIs, and make sure linux is consistent looking." I'm thinking that they're more looking for the ability to scale to a large number of processors, and high amounts of RAM.
On that subject, does anyone know if IBM's Big Iron patches ever made it on to the main kernel tree?
Garc
I'm sure IBM does a great deal of validation testing. Why not tell the kernel developers where things come up short? One of the most valuable development prerequisites are good bug reports. IBM could unleash their testing team. Or does politics get in the way -- the testing team manager doesn't approve of the Linux takeover?
1. As has already been stated IBM has been on the Linux bandwagon for several years now.
2. This makes perfect sense for IBM. They are mainly a service company and secondly a hardware company. Anyone who has done business with IBM knows that they, like most other large computer companies, make their money on installation and support. If they can cut the expense of developing their own OS they can focus on their core business.
Sorry to all the Linux kids out there, but real Unix Operating Systems, such as Solaris and BSD-based systems, are stronger, more stable, and faster, when set up correctly, then linux will ever be. Why? simple: SLC's are there for a reason. The linux kernel may be controlled and coordinated by one person, but imagine a person with the supposed talent of Linus, times 50, working on making the Solaris Kernel better.
Note: I am not a Solaris advocate.
teknopurge
Website Hosting
"yes"
"no"
"You're an idiot and there are really good reasons Linux can do it. But I'm only going to mention them, and with no sources."
"Well I too can mention things with no sources. YOU're an idiot"
(degrades to flamewar)
Can you imagine a Beowulf, what does AIX stand for anyway, All your Base, etc posts by our friend Anonymous Coward.
"Wasn't this posted last month?"
"CmdrTaco can't spell"
"BSD is better than Linux or AIX"
"Steve Jobs said that OSX is better than Linux and AIX"
various posts bitching about moderators.
There. I've saved you all that time. Now get back to work.
m00.
This seems a bit harsh. IBM did say that they are waiting for Linux to be ready for that task. Personally, I think it is ready for many tasks. Linux is quickly becoming more and more capable. For web server, desktops, and modrate sized deployments. Soon, Linux will be ready for the full enterprise deployments. It already runs several of the worlds most powerful supercomputers, and it is difficult to argue with that.
Wherever you go, there I am...
That is the real question.
I am sure IBM is not sitting there idling. I would hope they are not leaving it to us(the open source community) to build them the os they want. I assume they are hard at work on this project at hand.
That is nothing but good news. Not only could we benefit from the things they build but more importantly, maybe they could be the leaders of direction. "Where do you want to go today?"
Some people may worry about a big corporation being too heavily involved in their "free os". I personally look forward to the days to come if IBM get truly involved. I first tried linux a few years ago and loved it, and continue to use it today. However, I thought at this point it would be farther ahead in some areas. If it takes a company like IBM to come in and challenge, lead and contribute then fine by me.
Even if it doesn't work for IBM, the advances will benefit all of us who use it now and this is a Good Thing.
I've been noticing this for a while, and I've got to get it off my chest.
Is it just me or does it sometimes seem like CmdrTaco posts the 'best' stories? I get the feeling that he's pulling the best for himself, not letting anyone else post the 'big' stories...
Is he really a tyrant with a large ego appetite? Where everyone is walking around on eggshells, careful not to upset the big 'T'? Lest he throw a 'hissy fit' and a large dosh of 'shit' their way for posting what was clearly a 'Taco' quality post?
These are the things I think about before I force myself to go to work on Mondays...
CrplChimichanga
But perhaps IBM is only refferring to userland apps, rather than kernel stuff. Userland apps
can be portable stuff.
Remember OS/2? OS/2 is currently making the most money it ever has for IBM, simply because it's in maintenance cycle now... IBM simply does no new development, and continues to make money on support, while encouraging folks to consider other OS options.
IBM never completely drops support, and would never leave profitable AIX shops out in the cold.
The idea of IBM dropping AIX 100% in favor of Linux is a pretty long shot. As long as they have paying customers for AIX support, AIX will continue to live. Now where Linux comes in as a big play for IBM may have something to do with upgrade paths. Say for instance company X developes an application but they can't afford to ramp to big iron hardware to run it. IBM sells them some netfinities running Linux to get them jumpstarted. Then if their business starts to expand they would have the ability to migrate them up to a RS/6000 or AS/400 based system. The big kicker is that they can maintain 100% portability across the hardware platforms. Migration is a simple compile away :) This is a pretty powerful proposition, especially with the market in its current state. VC is dry, revenues are down, the idea of starting cheap and ramping up when needed may be Linux's biggest strength.
~
If IBM writes industrial-strength, expensive, supportable applications for Linux (like Domino, for example) then they can sell those apps to people that don't have the bucks to buy their specialized hardware.
For the past several years, IBM has been moving into the support and services areas with less of an emphasis on selling hardware. Selling complex software that requires specialized implementation services fits perfectly into that model. Porting those Apps to a less expensive platform makes the apps (and the implementation services) appeal to a much broader range of small- and medium-sized businesses. They can sell to companies that can't currently afford the big iron to run those apps.
Opening up new markets for tried-and-true applications is probably a very good business decision. I've never been a big IBM fan at all, but personally, I think it's a shrewd and calculated move. I applaud them for making it.
- Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
I think what companies with such strong trademarks and consumerbase as IBM sees in Linux is free labour.
AIX costs huge amount of $$$ to develop, with Linux all they have to do is to put a few engineers on adopting it. Instead of spending money on developing a whole OS, just write some drivers and adopt it to your hardware.
Ofcause, initially there will be some high costs moving towards Linux but in the end I think free labour is a all win situation for IBM.
(It's crucial that you understand this. While those developers can be thanked for the GNU/Linux implementation, the design and archiecture is stolen-- albeit modifed -- IP.)
... namely from MINIX, which was a minimal, educational recreation of UNIX 7), not stolen in any sense of the word, not even in the "newspeak" sense that the Copyright Cartels and DMCA Apologists have redefined the word to mean.
While you make some good points, I take exception to this characterization of GNU/Linux's similarity to UNIX and its POSIX compliance as "stolen IP." Numerous court decisions, including Apple v. Microsoft, have consistently ruled that compatiblity, compliance to standards, and even the wholesale mimicking of a competitor's look and feel do not constitute a violation of intellectual property in any manner. The design and architecture were copied legally (actually, to be historically accurate, they were copied from a copy
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I was using AIX workstations until a couple of years ago. Here are some of the things that drove me up the wall about them:
AIX is so un-UNIXy that the Unix System Administrator Handbook kept making fun of it throughout its pages as the odd-man-out (it also deals with Solaris, Irix, HP/UX, and others), comments they removed in later editions presumably not to upset AIX users too much.
In defense of AIX workstations and servers, they are very reliable machines, and people who work only in the AIX world and don't deal with other UNIX systems probably never notice and don't care about the idiosyncracies.
Altogether, I see a big culture clash if IBM tries to move AIX users to Linux. And I think that clash may well end up harming Linux if it causes stuff like JFS and LVM to be adopted more widely in Linux. Let's not fall into the Microsoft mindset where everybody must run the same software; there is nothing wrong with having Linux, AIX, Windows, Solaris, and other systems co-exist. We don't need an OS monoculture.