'Unbreakable Linux'

Zadig writes "It appears as if Dell, Oracle, and Red Hat CEOs have decided to make 'Unbreakable Linux'. Could a giant arise amidst today's insecure and constantly patched linux world that could hold the title of Unbreakable Linux? I doubt it, but it will be fun to try, what are your thoughts?" There's a similar article on CNet.

Comments

This is a Good Thing(tm)...

[gillbates]

I see this as a good thing for three reasons:

• In the past, the reliability and robustness of Linux systems has been hampered more by the hardware than anything else. A key selling point of mainframes has been the fact that the hardware is significantly more reliable and fault tolerant than PC's.
• This blows away Microsoft's arguments against the open source model. Contrary to what the CEO of Microsoft may assert, the GPL is not a cancer, but is now showing its value as companies such as RedHat are making deals with the large computer manufacturers.
• This will absolutely defeat Microsoft's claim that Windows NT/2000/XP is ready for the enterprise. Now that the major database systems vendors such as Oracle are supporting Linux, there is simply no reason not to use it. Where's the commercial clustering software for Windows? Oh, right, it's not there - nor is it planned.

Microsoft has been touting Windows NT, 2000, and XP as enterprise-level operating systems for several years, but the reason why they have not successfully broken into the enterprise market is because the hardware on which NT runs is generally not reliable nor fault tolerant when compared to mainframes. The solution to this is to run a cluster of machines, but once again, Microsoft offers no clustering support for their "enterprise level operating systems". The lack of availability of a commercially backed clustering package for Linux was one of Microsoft's key objections to Linux in their "Linux Myths" whitepaper. It appears as if all of the criticisms Microsoft has had of Linux are now becoming irrelevant - Linux has adapted to the times, but Microsoft, as usual, has not.

This could easily keep Microsoft from ever breaking into the enterprise market. The simple truth is that PC boxes could not support enterprise and mission critical applications in the past because of the hardware reliability factor. Unbreakable Linux has the power to change this, and keep Microsoft out of the enterprise-level market indefinitely. Get used to the desktop, Microsoft, because you aren't going anywhere else!