Miscellaneous LinuxWorld Tidbits

The excitement of the LinuxWorld Expo simply cannot be expressed in words. We already mentioned that Mandrake and HP are working on Linux on the desktop (warning, manager-speak). The Open Source Development Lab is expanding its focus through the creation of a working group on "carrier grade Linux" for the telecommunications market. CNET has several LinuxWorld stories up. And let's throw in one more, only tangentially related: IBM has settled with San Francisco for spray-painting their sidewalks.

Comments

FreeBSD dominant in carrier markets

[Anonymous Coward]

HP would be well-advised to switch to the
free source FreeBSD operating system if it
wants to break into the telecommunications
business.

About IBM and their sidewalks...

[Uttles]

IBM broke the law ... and guess what? We're talking about IBM

OK, let's think about the target audience with this campaign. In my opinion IBM comes away with two victories here: not only did they paint cool little adverts all over the city, they also got in trouble with the law in an insignificant (to IBM $110k is nothing) way which in turn will up their status with the people who are likely to buy linux servers.

Of course that could be just the way I see things, but my liking of IBM has gone up 2 points because of that. I like the ads, I think they're funny, and they're not hurting anything. I also like the fact that they got in trouble for doing it, it makes the company as a whole seem like the same kind of carefree jokesters that my freinds and I tend to be. Anyway, that's my $0.02

HP Replacing SGI at Dreamworks Animation Studio

[DeadBugs]

Announced at Linux World HP has inked a deal with Dreamworks to replace their remaining SGI Irix machines with Linux.

Dreamworks has also announced Shrek 2, maybe there will be a penguin in it

Re:HP Replacing SGI at Dreamworks Animation Studio

[4of12]

This harkens to a couple of big issues that I see with Linux on the desktop. I think the upfront cost of Linux on x86 hardware for the desktop is extremely attractive. Enterprise level system administration and other support costs will probably be not so dramatically less than either UNIX/RISC or Windows desktop deployments.

Furthermore, with big vendors like HP and IBM working with 3rd party hardware and software suppliers gives Linux desktops much needed credibility and momentum.

Both of those companies are in great positions relative to the other traditional UNIX desktop companies, Sun and SGI, in that they not only possess a lot of experience with UNIX as a software environment, but also possess a hardware arm of the company that has been producing x86 desktops for many years. Despite some forays into the x86 desktop world by both Sun and SGI, they don't have the same depth of experience that IBM and HP do in this arena, and I think it puts them at a disadvantage in the Linux desktop market that I think will become tremendously important within the next 12 months.

Carrier-Grade for those not familiar

[cfulmer]

So, WRT the OSDN "Carrier Grade Linux" thread, I work for one of those companies that has 'Other' in there. Here are the some of the main things that general-purpose OS's tend to lack:

1. Redundant processors -- there are always two processors running. When one fails, control switches to the other processor. Meanwhile, the failed processor (actually, the entire board) can be replaced and brought back to life. Without affecting any application running on the system, heck typically without their even being aware.

2. Ability to add and remove peripheral cards in a running system -- so, you have a system that has a card with 8 T1 lines going into it, and you want to add another card -- just stick it in, configure it, and away you go.

3. Redundant links -- things like "If one lan interface drops, I'll switch to the other one and keep any connections up." (this requires support from your network), etc....

4. Seamless software upgrade -- if you have two processors, you run the current software on one, get the new software running on the other one, sync them up and then the new software takes control and doesn't lose track of what was going on.

5. Related to #4, above -- "Cutover". If you're running on system 'A' that's obsolete, you need to be able to switch over to using newer system 'B' and not lose anything that's going on. This isn't necessarily an OS thing.

All these requirements come from age-old regulatory requirements that said that ma bell could set her rates based on the quality of service that it provides, and which forced the bell companies to keep extensive records of outages and downtimes. So, not only were there the above software requirements, but there are also a bunch of hardware requirements (boards have to be hot-swappable, for example), and power requirements as well -- telephony companies have multiple connections to the power grid with battery backup and generators, and so on...

With all that in place, it's amazing that they still bury the redundant cable right next to the primary cable so some yutz on a backhoe can come along and take out the phone system.

Re:My Mother Running Linux

[sinserve]

My girlfriend (a high school senior) is running
debian+ximian on her desktop.
She knows nothing about 'puting (she is an artist.)
and doesn't mind it at all.

Infact, she doesn't even recognize it as a different
OS, she thinks it is all the same.

What linux world are you attending?

[Yankovic]

Flamesuit on.

Fine, maybe I'm a cynical corporate guy, but I'm pretty UNIMPRESSED with linux world as a whole. Linux on the mainframe = z/OS and nothing more. And that's all we're hearing! All day everyday, linux on the mainframe. Huge sections of the floor are curtained off, most of the sessions are half full. I'm sorry, but I'm more depressed than when I came here.

Except for the golden penguin, which was truly a nerd's delight, this doesn't bode well. It's all basically OEMs (where are the ISVs?!?) moving from HPUX/AIX/etc to Linux... which means forking and proprietary code soon enough.