A Quarter-Million Dollar Box For A Free OS

popeyethesailor writes: "According to a CNET story, the server startup Egenera will be debut its high end Linux servers for financial services customers, running Red Hat Linux. An earlier CNETstory details their design." That's a hefty pricetag, but the companies they hope to sell to ("market--financial-services companies and service providers") aren't shy about investing in tools. Of course, an S/390 isn't cheap either, no matter how many GNU/Linux images it's running ;)

Comments

We're heading back to the '80s

[sticks_us]

Here's why:

1. The dot-com boom has pretty much evaporated, leaving the realm of "professional computer work" to geeky types with college degrees and bad hair (I'm one of them). The work that is done is now more mundane and laborious(billing, insurance, reporting, etc) than $20K-bonus-scooter-riding-dot-com-hipster-streamin g-multimedia stuff. (I'm not bitter-I'm jealous)

2. Computers are now getting bigger and more mainframe-y (See comment above). More and more enterprises are centralizing mission-critical functions, primarily for ease of management as well as power and security. Proof:. We've already got Linux/390, the Solaris E10K, there's some newbigandexciting Intel box out there I keep hearing about that has 64-way SMP and now this.

Anyone have the newest Creative Computing?

TCO

[onion2k]

This just goes to show that the total cost of ownership for Linux/Unix/NT/2k has very little to do with the license for the OS at all. Hardware, admin, the software running on the box and so on more than make up the the trivial price differences between most server operating systems. Just because a Linux CD might be free doesn't mean running it on an enterprise box is going to save you a single penny.