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?

progress ;)

[^Z]

What we have seen 10 yrs ago? Last-generation hardware being used for servers. Now we see newer and better software running on older hardware designs (e. g. S/390). Do the math. Next generation of even more powerful software will run on even older (yet refurbished) hardware designs: expect Linux 4.x run on 8192 processor UNIVAC, with 5.0 kernel for 50GHz ENIAC in the works.

Enterprise credibility

[TheLoneCabbage]

This is a verry good trend when you stop to think about it.

One of the key issue technical column writers have been b!tching about is that Linux lacks enterprise server credibility.

With Linux driving mainframes and massive Credit Card / insurance company type machines who could complain about Linux's capabilities to handle their buisness demands. (if it can balance the budget for a fortune 500, it can host your stupid ASP/Intranet/fileserver/DB)

Think about the (Ugh! I'm gonna be sick) marketing angle... the average small buisness, or even home user, can have access to the same toys as multi-billion dollar corporations and goverments. (barring the obvious memmory and other hardware limits, this is about perception after all)

And it's not about a free OS. It's about the ability to develop the app on a PC and recompile it to run on a computer that makes Deep Thought look like Rain Man. And on top of all that the big system will work just like any other linux box running X. So it's easy to administer (wow! Who would have thought to say that about Linux!!)