The Pros and Cons of Mainframe Linux

magellan writes "There is a good article on LinuxWorld.com that goes over some of the pros and cons of Linux on the mainframe. The author, Paul Murphy is an old mainframer and current UNIX user, as well as a frequent contributor to LinuxWorld.com, so he has some good insights. "

Comments

This is about MAINFRAMES not minis

[Ashurbanipal]

Um, Solaris, Irix, and HP/UX (shudder) are *NOT* mainframe operating systems.

MVS and OS/390 are mainframe operating systems.

You are talking out of your nether regions, especially when you call linux's TCP/IP stack inferior to HP/UX. I have adminned every operating system mentioned above except Irix, and you sir are grossly incorrect.

Re:Linux has scalibility problems

[Pauly]

And I just thought he was an idiot for stating that Solaris, Irix, and HP/UX "were designed from the ground up with mainframe usage in mind".

UNIX was designed to get away from the mainframe usage paradigm, not reinforce it. Read the article. It yields good insight into the differences between the Mainframe Way (machine resources are more important than user demands) and the UNIX Way (users needs are more important than the machine's).

Report roasts linux on the mainframe

[nadiizu]

There is another article on ZDNET link that roasts Linux on the mainframe. I think people were too harsh toward sun when they published their report, but the reality is that Linux is not ready for the mainframe YET.

Re:Sun FUD Campaign

[cnladd]

"This article basically says that you can take a midrange Sun server and do everything that a z800 can do but much better. I don't know of any Sun Server that can run N Linux clients in a VM at full speed. "

Please point out the point in the article where this is mentioned, because I don't recall this ever being said. :)

As a matter of fact, there are several points in the article where the author mentions that Sun (and other, traditional UNIX solutions) are intended to be used for completely different purposes than mainframes. From what I've read, he doesn't seem to be saying "Linux on an z/Series system outright sucks". I see an article who's point is "Don't spend $5M+ on a z/Series with Linux when one (or several, or whatever) PC or Sun system will do.

Looking at the sidebars from the article, it appears that this is just part one in a series of three. From some of the statements in these sidebars, it appears that the main focus of this is trying to cut through much of IBM's FUD and point out that Linux on the mainframe isn't always the right way to go. He specifically states that in the second part he'll cover the areas in which he feels Linux on the mainframe makes sense.

Finally, as far as being a Sun FUD campaign, what the hell makes you think that? I haven't seen one shred of evidence to support that. Sure, he only has figures for PCs and Suns, but he states that it's because that's all he had access to at the time. He came right out in the clear and admitted that so that everyone reading the article can keep that in mind. Having worked on both Sun and HP systems, I'm convinced that - if the Sun statistics are acurrate - the stats will be similar on a similarly configured HP box as well.

Now, just calm down a bit, okay? This is starting to sound like the arguments that I hear over the cube walls sometimes, with the mainframe folks cutting the UNIX and NT folks, and vice versa. This is the kind of crap that makes UNIX and NT folks think of the "mainframers" as a bunch of old bigots with blinders on. I think we all realize that different types of systems are valuable for different purposes, and most of us who read Slashdot regularly knows how to keep an open mind.