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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?"
well, will those quite familiar with aix please enlighten us with what linux could be missing? it's got xfs, lvm, ppc support. and that's about the end of what i know aix and linux now share.
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
Now if only all of the other vendors realized that they were selling hardware instead of UNIX, they'd be happy to switch to Linux.
Actually, they probably all have some kind of "ditch-our-crappy-UNIX-for-Linux" roadmap. Some are much further away than others. But it'd be nice if it actually happened.
All I know about Unix-flavored systems comes through Linux. Could someone post a short list of the areas where Linux is most deficient compared to Unices like AIX?
:-)
I know that real-time applications are one issue, as well as multi-processor performance. But how much work has to be done, and what are the prospects?
Thanks in advance for not flaming the newbie.
A customer service representative will be with me shortly.
I'm reminded of the scene in "Pirates of Silicon Valley" where Gates and company were sitting down to negotiate with IBM and it was said, "Everybody knows that the real money is made in hardware, not software".
Well IBM was wrong at the time in that statement but it might finally be the truth.
It also makes sense for IBM from a financial perspective. Instead of having a building full of programmers/managers and other overhead that eats up corporate profits just to support AIX, why not outsource that dependency to the open-source users of the world. Big blue then reduces their expenses, increases their income and the open-source community gets a juggernaut pulling for their team. A win-win situation if I've ever heard one.
p.s. - These are my opinions and not my employers who happens to be discussed in this thread.
-- "In a time of drastic change it is the learners who survive; the 'learned' find themselves fully equipped to live in
Well, I don't have the time to do a search, but I have some "unvalidated thoughts and memories" on the subject.
I think a while back IBM wanted to submitt some patches to the linux kernel that would allow it to play better with the big boys. The patches would enable scaling up to a large number of processors, and efficiently using large amounts of memory. IIRC (doubtful, someone else wanna help me out here), linus didn't want the patches b/c he cared more about linux running on a normal machine well. I hope that they'd just do something like #ifdef _BIG_IRON_. Instead, IBM just kinda backed off, they didn't want to create any sort of resentment from the community, nor did they want to fork the kernel so they could have a version with their patches. I think the willingness of the company to give, and not get upset if its gifts aren't accepted well is a great testiment to its devotion to linux.
I think insertion of those patches, even if on a #ifdef type basis would be a leap in the right direction for IBM to replace AIX with linux.
I'm not 100% sure of the facts, if someone would like to correct me, please do. Of course if someone wants to back me up with links, that'd be ok too :)
Garc
It also makes sense for IBM from a financial perspective. Instead of having a building full of programmers/managers and other overhead that eats up corporate profits just to support AIX, why not outsource that dependency to the open-source users of the world. Big blue then reduces their expenses, increases their income and the open-source community gets a juggernaut pulling for their team. A win-win situation if I've ever heard one.
Do you honestly think that if IBM were to ditch AIX for linux that this would happen? The value of running IBM hardware and software is that IBM is there to fix it right away. Find a bug in AIX? IBM gets on it in a timely fashion. If anything, I would wager that IBM will fork their own version of Linux if they decide to forgo AIX. Large corporations like the track history and reputation of IBM and are frightened by the lack of the same for Linux. IMHO that seems to be what stops large-scale deployment of Linux in the corporate world - who is going to take ownership of this problem and provide us with patches?
BTW - from what I have seen, (as an IBM'er) the revenue and profits come from annual support and maintenance contracts, not from hardware and software sales per se.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
But assuming that GNU/Linux can evolve to an acceptable level (the level of UNIX, in other words), and assuming that the support from IBM, HP, Sun, and Compaq continues, we'll be in a great position. One of the promises of UNIX was portability; if five commercial UNIXs have a common interface, they should be easy to port between, right?
Wrong... years of corporate specialization and AT&T's rightful protection of the system have created a computing culture which is almost as closed as Microsoft's. Now, porting an application from Solaris to HP-UX can potentially take as long as porting from Solaris to NT.
Enter GNU/Linux. Stallman, Torvalds, and the rest of the usual suspects essentially ripped off AT&T. (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.) GNU/Linux is UNIX-like, but is also completely open. Thus, if Linux can meet these corporate giants' needs, they should adopt it.
IBM's adoption of Linux for the enterprise will mean many things. It will mean that RS/6000 customers like myself will get new software faster, because Linux is always ahead of AIX on software developers' port lists. And if Linux can also run reasonably on Sun and HP hardware, then we could be talking about UNIX's dream of portability, embodied in GNU/Linux: an open, common interface for hardcore RISC systems. This would be a good thing for everybody expect supporters of inferior x86 servers: x86 hardware vendors and Microsoft.
But while GNU/Linux has brought this uptopia one step closer, it isn't here yet. Talk to any knowledgable, experienced developer or sysadmin, and he will tell you that GNU/Linux simply can't touch UNIX for the majority of serious computing tasks. Linux is cheaper, and in some instances is faster, but just can't deliver the same kind of scalable performance and rock-solid availabilty that are the reasons I'm running AIX right now.
--
I like to watch.
It would really be nice to see someone (IBM) try to build a Linux desktop system. With high quality hardware and Linux with GNOME or KDE we would end up with a machine resembling an Apple G4 + OS X.
Could there be any money in such a move?
You have some very valid points indeed.
My concern is that are the current programmers who are cooperating on writing the Linux kernel know how to write kernel code that will take advantage of IBM mainframe hardware? Programming for multiprocessor x86 server boxes is one thing, but programming for IBM mainframes with their POWER CPU design, massively parallel CPU architecture and high bandwidth I/O everywhere is quite something else, especially if you want it to run with the type of extreme reliability mainframe users demand.
These machines have the same hardware, but different OS-es. The RS/6000 group ships their systems with AIX, while the AS/400 group ships their systems with OS/400 and if the customer wants a Unix, with Linux, not with AIX.
Rumour has it that the groups don't like eachother that much. What I wonder now is: is IBM axing the complete RS/6000 group in favor of the AS/400 group?
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
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.
First a caveat: These are my own views and not those of IBM Canada.
Why do you think that IBM needs control of the Linux kernel? It's not necessary. Because the kernel is open source any features that IBM feels are necessary for running Linux on, for example, a 4-way H50 RS/6000 machine can be provided as a patch to the main kernel tree and pre-compiled binaries can be distributed by IBM from one of the web sites. Yes - someone has to keep the patches sane against the latest kernel but it is unlikely in the long run that useful and proven patches would remain out of the kernel tree forever unless they seriously clash with some design decision.
Patch maintenance is a minor headache against a stable kernel series. It only becomes a major problem if you try and keep patches sync'd against a development kernel and IBM is very very unlikely to request customers use such a kernel in a production environment.
And secondly, why do you think that IBM needs total control over everything they use? That's nonsense. Working in the RDMBS world, we all work to published standards. There is no 'total control' exercised by IBM when submitting proposals for new SQL functionality or DRDA protocols. Total control is not the only option for making money out there - being the best at something still makes better business sense. Making sure that the customer support services are actually helping customers makes good financial sense. We have all got really warped by MS's monopoly position and healthy financial situation that it is too easy to forget that it is possible to make a good income by being good in a competitive marketplace.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I would argue that its appearance in the scientific-computing community wasn't a fluke; in fact, I'll assert that scientific computing was one of Linux's earliest natural "markets."
Scientific organizations typically have
- lots of raw intellectual and technical talent,
- meager funding and tight budgets,
- a "doing it right often means doing it yourself" mind-set, and
- lots of in-house curiosity.
Can you think of a more natural environment for a home-brew OS's ferment?
(I started using and supporting Linux for serious scientific computing in 1993.)
Good lord. Why would you love to see SMIT go away? It is easily the best designed and most powerful administrative interface/frontend on any UNIX.
Sure SMIT allows morons to admin a machine, but it is only an interface to the WEALTH of commands that exist on the back-end. Once you've done a lot of AIX work you use them, only firing up smit when you're concerned about doing something kinda odd/dangerous correctly, or to review command syntax.
AIX is probably the most misunderstood and least known UNIX out there. Makes me sad, really. I love it, and don't really think any other UNIX compares to it from an administrative/features standpoint. But understand this - If AIX features were available in Linux, I would certainly prefer Linux...for more reasons than I can list.
Honestly I don't really understand why any major vendors would be supporting Linux development in PREFERENCE to their own OS. The slant here (historically for the past 1-2 years) seems to think that SGI, Compaq and IBM are dying to pitch their current OSes in favor of Linux. I just don't see that happening, for a multitude of reasons.
For SGI it could be a long-term strategic plan, if they migrate solely to IA-64 for their hardware. But customers [admins] are going to be pretty unhappy with Linux of 2001-2002 being run on their higher-end hardware I think.
IBM I believe is just hedging bets, and designing a mechanism by which they can be poised for a large sweep of AIX into the mainstream. Once I can run AIX on commodity hardware I can actually afford, it will be done. (IA-64...but when the hell will it be a reasonable cost?!!?)
Compaq...don't know much about Tru64 anymore, and Compaq is a small player. Alpha is a terrific architecture and Linux/FreeBSD are reportedly ROCK stable on those so who knows.
I don't mean to get on a rant here (:-). I just read things like "IBM Wants Linux", which is a slight misrepresentation of the story, and wonder how much pro-Linux fascism there really is on this site.
sedawkgrep
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
Everyone in this discussion is talking about how Linux is not quite/ not yet up to the mark of a commercial unix variant. I have occasionally used Unixes ( AIX/Solaris/Linux) mostly as a programmer using POSIX/Unix APIs and haven't found much difference(other than the fact that the documents for linux are much better and charming).I don't really know much about "enterprise quality , mission critical" operating system features. So assuming these people are right, where do you get such comparisions / technical information /feature lists ? Any links , mailing list etc will be greatly appreciated.
And while we are at it , can anyone please explain why the hell I can't print a < sign in my subject header ?
I agree with most of your comments. SMIT is way cool. IBM should open source the SMIT framework, and let linux hackers fill in the proper commands for Linux.
/proc, some in one .h file, some in another .h file, and *NONE* in the normal kernel configuration method.
The ODM is real drag though. It make AIX administration so different from every other Unix, that only the extreme usefulness of SMIT makes administering the system tolerable.
IBM's jfs/lvm are great too.
But you forgot one really great thing about about AIX. You never need to rebuild the kernel! (well, hardly ever. The authors of the O'Reilly Unix admin book mention one case.) Kernel parameters are self-adjusting for the most part.
Linux doesn't have the kernel parameter hell of System V (driver hell instead), but it does have kernel parameters, and if you are working at the high end, you _will_ need to tune them. And what's worst is that there is no one central place to find them all. Some are in
A question I like to ask folks when they are intensely debating their favorite OS, etc:
What operating system and hardware do you want controlling your final landing approach in bad weather at your favorite bad-weather airport?
It is interesting how our responses don't always mirror what we *like* to work with.
Oddly, this is one of those cases where I begin to prefer AIX or IBM mainframe hardware..
the RS/6000 software cannot run on the AS/400 hardware and vica-versa. The As/400 PowerPc chips are unique from what I have seen in the IBM server offerings.
/390, a As/400, and an RS/6000 all servers - and they all appeal to different corporate cultures you can make some impressive sales)
Now there is competition between all groups in IBM, which is probably one reason IBM sells lots of servers (when you can call a
Now, the As/400 runs Linux virtualized... with no real perfomance penalty, and this is how they run Apache, which btw is mostly threaded because of Rochester As/400 programmers...
The key to the whole article is that Linux receives a lot of press, but its not a powerful operating system. Its an average operating system that is open to peer review, and average and open can mean many times more value than excellent and closed.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
This sounds less like a challenge to the Open Source community, than a vision to hijack the platform. IBM has pretty good (I want to say vast, but you guys will flame me) developer muscle. They can change Linux to fit their servers. They can throw out the code that doesn't work on their platforms, and keep the rest of the goodies. They can come up with a "Linux" that's only 50% of the Linux we know. It would still *look* like Linux, perhaps, though.
I would question: is the brand image of Linux sufficiently powerful for Big Blue to chuck AIX (and probably corporate pride), and do the amount of development needed to bring Linux up to be a mainframe OS?
Perhaps, it is the fact that if they have a single OS, from the very small to the very big, source code compatibility becomes a terribly attractive thing?
Could this become a move like Microsoft made with Java? Would the Open Source process ensure that that does not happen?
Apocalyptic vision: IBM's version of Linux is very good, very popular, and brings a smile to the lips and a cheer to the heart of the corporate IS manager. And though the modifications are free, they are not really usuable on x86es and PPCs. Ho hum. Now everone is buying IBM Linux, even if they own a piddly x86. Not because it has the same code as the one that runs on the RS6000, but because IBM makes it.
Capiche?
I hope I am very wrong.
I imagine that IBM would attempt to avoid forking the kernel. OTOH, they would be quite likely to come out with their own distribution. Or to rebrand one of the extant ones. They might even buy the company, but probably not. But I suspect that an "IBM Linux" would be quite acceptable to many people. And if they had to edit the code the remove all the red hats, or top hats, that would be a minor expense. Don't think of a fork, think of the way Mandrake started.
Now IBM would probably only sell their distribution to those who bought their hardware, but they might well be willing to sell maintenance contracts (which might [optionally?] include their distribution) to anyone. Just as Red Hat prefers to support customers who are running Red Hat Linux, because it cuts down on the variety of problems that they have to deal with, so it increases their profits without increasing their expenses.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If you haven't seen the double standard in practice, take a look below:
BEGIN MOCK BLOCK
END MOCK BLOCKIt seems that the stuff we mock in one OS we praise in another...
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
I seem to recall that there were a couple of issues here (based on vague recollections of a discussion on slashdot).
The first was that this was near the end of to 2.2 series, so Linus didn't want to accept any major changes, and the decision was to wait for the 2.4 kernel.
And the second was that there would have been a tremendous number of #ifdef patches. So the decision was to slightly modify the design of the 2.4 kernel so that there would be fewer required. And to wait for the 2.4 kernel.
But it was reported that there were some vigourous discussions before that decision was made.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
How is the kernel supposed to catch up to an OS like Solaris? IBM has 3 OS's to work on, i.e. AIX etc. On the other hand, Sun has 1 OS to support all their machines from back in the SPARCstation 1 days. It's completely specialized to run on ultrasparcs (albeit, intel is supported, SLOWLY). For Linux to support everything that Solaris does, it would take forever. Sun has the money to throw into the development because it relies on Solaris and nothing else. Linux runs really well on Intel hardware, and I think with the coming of 64bit processors, dirt cheap prices, and new motherboards, that it will become much more efficient to run intel/amd hardware. Plus once more cache is placed on these processors they will be more suitable for servers.
I don't think it's a matter of when Linux catches up, I think it's a matter of when I can put in 64 intel/amd processors in a system of 8 system boards and do it while the system is on. Right now, AMD & intel are having a big enough problem finding decent chipsets to work on 1 damn processor. I think it's a matter of hardware for intel (just because they have the most marketshare). We know they make huge mistakes (RDRAM? Were they drunk when they thought that disaster up?) and companies like AMD are much better. I want IBM to step in this realm and throw some punches.