IBM Supporting Linux On Power Processors

aheath writes "IBM issued a press release today titled 'Businesses Embrace Linux and IBM POWER Technology', indicating that: 'IBM eServer pSeries and iSeries systems are available for SUSE and Red Hat Linux operating systems (OS) on IBM's POWER microprocessor-based architecture.' CNET News are running a story about this, too, explaining: 'IBM has put more weight behind its effort to attract customers to Linux that runs on its own Power processors, an initiative that distinguishes Big Blue from its competitors in the server market.' IBM has also signed up 300 vendors to provide software to run under Linux on Power processors."

Comments

Linux, the last OS?

[ObviousGuy]

As Linux gets more and more momentum behind it, it starts to seem like it will be the last OS that will ever make serious inroads into the general public.

This is not to say that Tannenbaum cultists won't write their own little systems or that Bell Labs won't come up with some ingenious new idea. The thing is that the Open Source nature of Linux makes it possible that any new idea that exists in the real world can be incorporated into the Linux operating system and so Linux grows at the expense of other operating systems.

It's a lot like UNIX, which may be owned by SCO, but whose spirit is embodied in a handful of operating systems including Linux. Lisp is also this way, introducing very useful features that can be copied by other languages making them more Lispy than Lisp becoming more "other-languagy".

Re: Linux, the last OS?

[Black Parrot]

> As Linux gets more and more momentum behind it, it starts to seem like it will be the last OS that will ever make serious inroads into the general public.

You may be right, but I don't see how that conclusion could possibly follow from that observation. Linux may be the next OS to make serious inroads, but how could we possibly expect it to be the last one that does?

Re:Linux, the last OS?

[salimma]

If Unix-like OSes prevail and standardize on a couple of key platforms (x86-64 and PPC?), it would not matter. The other OSes could simply have a compatibility layer for the dominant OS and then, hey presto! they could run said OS' binaries unchanged.

The *BSDs have it today for Linux. Linux has compatibility modules for some other OSes too, though no distribution AFAIK ship the required userland libraries.

Re: Linux, the last OS?

[znu]

Linux is open. If anyone has anything new and interesting to do in the future, there's a good chance they'll start with Linux as a base -- they won't go off and write something new from scratch.

Re: Linux, the last OS?

[CBravo]

I don't know what you are inhaling, but there are good reasons to skip linux in a HW/OS design cycle. You would have to think outside the processor box "as we know it" though.

Re:Linux, the last OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting point, although I feel Linux is actually bringing more competition to the market and giving an opening for alternative OSes. There's no doubt that FreeBSD, for example, is seeing a lot of new users who've given Linux a try first.

I reckon that, given another five years, one of the 'hobbyist' desktop OSes will grab a good little chunk of market share. Linux rules, and I run it on my desktop all the time, but it's getting huge and unwieldy as the desktops of GNOME and KDE continue to grow. With this in mind, something like Syllable or OpenBeOS could get a good userbase if it's smaller, faster and simpler.

Whatever the case, we have a good future ahead. At least, let's hope so!

Re:Linux, the last OS?

[Spoing]

1. As Linux gets more and more momentum behind it, it starts to seem like it will be the last OS that will ever make serious inroads into the general public.

While I run Linux on all my machines except the Sun and AIX boxes, the main things I use are the desktop and server programs. Even if Linux the kernel were to go away, but the programs were still largely the same, it wouldn't impact me much.

I can easily see another operating system comming along that is referred to as "Linux-compatable" (similar to the BSD binary compatability layer or simply running X), and later replacing Linux. There is little reason why this could not happen technically or practically for most non-techy desktop users. Deploying a *BSD with Gnome or KDE or Linux would look the same and act the same for the most part since only the kernel would be different.

This is more likely in the Unix-like arena than it is in the closed world of Windows since portability is such a big deal. After all, a quick check shows 20 major architechtures in the Linux kernel sources ( ls /usr/src/kernel/linux/arch | wc -l ), and the directions that come with most source packages outside of the kernel are under most Unix-like systems "./configure ; make ; make install".

This portability is really a feature of GCC, so maybe Linux as a technology isn't as critical anyway right now?

Re:Linux, the last OS?

[Octorian]

Yeah, the underlying OS is more changable than most people think. When most people think "Linux", they're really thinking of a certain suite of userland software. Guess what? No one said you had to run Linux to use any of that. I have a desktop computer that uses KDE for the desktop, Evolution for E-Mail, Opera and Mozilla for the web, Gaim and X-Chat for chatting. What OS is it running? Solaris!

Now for x86, I often tend to lean towards FreeBSD. And guess what? Just about all that software also runs on FreeBSD, and it's actually very easy to get it all working.

With portability, however, I tend to prefer NetBSD as the "run on anything OS" (or OpenBSD, on the platforms it supports). I know Linux has a lot of ports, but those are just the kernel, often with little to back it up. With NetBSD, you get the "whole" system for most of the platforms on that very long list. Makes a great tinker OS for any random piece of computing hardware you may run across.

Re:Linux, the last OS?

[3Suns]

I highly doubt that this would be the case. While Linux certainly can adopt and embrace any new technology that crops up, it is still carrying a significant quantity of baggage by being Unix-like and Posix-based. This is good for now, and Unix has certainly proven its ageworthiness. But at some point in the future, it will be a fool's errand to continue adopting new OS technology into a Posix-based system.

I foresee a radical new OS design to take hold in the not-so-distant future. It may come from a research lab like Bell Labs or it may come direct from the Open Source front. It will challenge the Unix-like assumptions of OS design, or maybe it will implement them more cleanly. Just like Windows outgrew DOS and was eventually moved to a VMS-like OS core (NT), Open Source operating systems will outgrow Unix.

Personally I would like to see an operating environment that is fully real-time (like QNX), and has support for fully transparent multithreading/multiprocessing. It should have a more-than-hierarchal filesystem model, with an advanced VFS at its core (sorta like Windows is attempting), database-like functionality (like Apple Newton, or the new Storage project), and the nondistinction between files and directories. All of these things are possible on top of Posix, but it would be much nicer if they were implemented at the core of the OS. As it stands, Linux is rather tied to a Posix core.

Re: Linux, the last OS?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

If anyone has anything new and interesting to do in the future, there's a good chance they'll start with Linux as a base -- they won't go off and write something new from scratch.

Unless the developers have an expectation of becoming the "Next Microsoft" and therefore charge for a closed OS. Could happen--after all, IBM didn't think that anyone would be willing to pay for an OS, and look where that got MSFT. Could be that someone cooks up a radical and useful enough of an OS that people would be willing to pay for it vs. get one without those features for free.

Re: Linux, the last OS?

[znu]

There are certainly good reasons, I just don't think it's going to happen all that much. Major conceptual changes in operating systems come slowly, if at all. There are some research operating systems doing interesting things, but in the market people still talk about "modern" OS features like preemptive multitasking, which must be 40 years old now.

Re:Linux, the last OS?

[jtshaw]

You will all be laughing when you find out Plan9 is actually the future.... and I have been running it for YEARS! HAHAHA.... oh wait... I can't do anything with that PC....

Re:Linux, the last OS?

[GoldMace]

Well, I, for one, certainly hope it isn't the last OS. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's pretty good, and perhaps better than everything else, but it still sucks. It's still not as cool as the computers they have in Sci Fi movies. I want an OS that never, ever, ever, crashes(or is at least able to recover from crashing without restarting. And also one that is much easier to use. For instance, have speech recognition built in, and if you don't say exactly the right commands it figures them out for you. And most importantly, never pisses me off. I'm sorry, but even the great Linux pisses me off sometimes. Can any of you honestly say it doesn't?

Re:Linux, the last OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

> As Linux gets more and more momentum behind it, it starts to seem like it will be the last OS that will ever make serious inroads into the general public.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

Re:Linux, the last OS?

[iammaxus]

ObviousGuy is defenitley a good name for him. It really really seems like he has never ever ever read /. O well, he is right...

Re:Linux, the last OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would agree with you as well if it wasn't for the fact that what you said is meaningless drivel.

Re: Linux, the last OS?

[sql*kitten]

If anyone has anything new and interesting to do in the future, there's a good chance they'll start with Linux as a base -- they won't go off and write something new from scratch.

Why do you say that? Linux is based on many of the same assumptions Unix is, and Unix isn't where the research is being done. That is what Tannenbaum meant when he said Torvalds would fail his course - Linux is a reimplementation of Unix, not a new OS in its own right. Take Plan 9 from Bell Labs as an example - it's not a Unix variant like Linux, Solaris, AIX etc, it's completely different.

The fact is, if you need an OS that has been matured over 30 years, Unix isn't a bad choice, but if you have something new and interesting to try, then you are better off starting from scratch.

The march...

[Anonymous Coward]

Today the corporate arena, tomorrow the whole world!

What are they thinking?

[Pieroxy]

In a few month, they'll have to give everything away to SCO anyways...

Re:What are they thinking?

[jcgf]

Not sure why this was modded as a Troll. I think it was supposed to be funny. Jared

Re:What are they thinking?

[RVT]

I think it was because of the poor spelling ;-)

IBM Linux strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM's Linux strategy has been comprehensive (from top to bottom) for some time. Perhaps this just signals that they feel those versions of Linux are stable enough to promote more heavily, or perhaps it is just a reiteration of what they have been doing all along.

I don't really see how supporting Linux on their own machines distinguishes them from their competitors, any more than having their own house RISC already does. Sun is getting eaten by Linux, but HP and SGI both support Linux on their new machines with Itanium 2 processors that are competitive with the POWER family.

Re:IBM Linux strategy

[cerberusss]

I don't really see how supporting Linux on their own machines distinguishes them from their competitors

I have the feeling they're trying to make their hardware stand out. They'll just say, "hey don't spend it on the OS, but spend it on the hardware". Linux makes the OS more or less irrelevant as was noted in another comment.

Oracle tries to do this from the software point of view. Oracle's strategy is basically cheap lintel boxen in a cluster. That way, the customer's budget allows for more Oracle licenses...

Re:IBM Linux strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

I would disagree with you based on the fact that IBM has no Linux support strategy. All support comes from your distro vendor of choice (RedHat or Suse) or through IBM Global $$ervices. Guess what area of IBM is the big money maker? Hint: It's not software licensing.

I agree with the previous post that IBM do wants to dump AIX strictly from an economics perspective. Look at what IBM is done with all the ASF donations and efforts. They take the tax write-off with the intellectual property donation to then bundle the software with their commercial offering. Have you looked at some of the Websphere Application Server' plumbing? A bunch of ASF packages. And the Eclipse-based IDEs?

We have both p and i series boxes in my shop and all you get from IBM is that Linux on Power hardware is very sexy -- that's all.

My .5 cent

Debian

[|>>?]

As a lone voice in the wildernis, I'd like to ask IBM to put their support behind Debian also. While RH and SuSE are fine organisations, Debian is particularly special IMHO, enough to receive the support from all major vendors.

(Secretly dreaming of Debian *everywhere* - hey, I can dream, it's on my Sparc, my i386 and my Mac, one day I'll make my Clie boot it too!)

Re:Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian is "particularly special" if you mean that everything in the distro is 5 years out of date and they have been using the same piece of shit installer since 1996.

Re:Debian

[drinkypoo]

IBM only needs to support the kernel, and perhaps some special userspace tools. Debian is then free to come along and create a distribution.

With that said, anyone know how to make linux talk to the LCD on a Network Engines, Inc. Roadster LX? :)

Re:Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I am about to buy an IBM Bladecenter and would like to see Debian on the blades, I have googled and there doesn't seem to be much info about it out there.

Otherwise it might have to be RedHat....

Re:Debian

[|>>?]

they have been using the same piece of shit installer since 1996

This is in my opinion ignorance speaking. While the Debian installer may not look as sexy as the graphical installers you either use or are familiar with, the installer used in Debian can be used on many platforms that don't need to ever run a GUI. Furthermore, the installer can be run over a serial cable - try that with a GUI.

I must point out that while the complexity associated with the Debian installer appears to pose problems for some users, I came upon it after trying many other distributions, and I can generally install a Debian box in around 15 minutes. I have full control over the process, and it suits me just fine.

Your assertion that the installer has not changed since 1996 is ignorant, because in the time that I've moved from Sid to Potato and Woody - now Testing, the installer has changed and evolved. I will concede that the first time I saw the installer, I thought myself back to the 1980's but the software soon showed it was not from that era - despite the lack of fancy graphics.
Perhaps it would behoove you to comment wisely before shooting from the hip.

Re:Debian

[|>>?]

Creating a distribution for IBM is of course always a possiblilty, but if you have their corporate support, you have access to their hardware, their technicians and their expertise. Supporting one kernel is one thing, supporting Debian is an entirely different proposition. Thus my request for Debian support from IBM.

Re:Debian

[|>>?]

Otherwise it might have to be RedHat

Being woven from Debian cloth all I can say is: Resist, it isn't futile

Re:Debian

[brlewis]

Obviously, if IBM ships machines with Debian already on them, you won't ever see the installer.

As for Debian Stable being out of date, you're right. Note that the selling point of Debian Stable is stability, e.g. on servers. However, if you really want an IBM mainframe for your desktop, you can get the latest and greatest stuff with Debian Testing.

I wonder when...

[Theanswriz42]

...SCO will announce this was all their idea and it is also in violation of their IP rights?

so when will we see Linux on a G5?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Linux on an IBM PPC is just a short hop over from a G5.

When?

RS

Re:so when will we see Linux on a G5?

[unother]

Gee... they're already working on it.

Re:so when will we see Linux on a G5?

[shannara256]

It's not a long hop, to be sure, but I don't know how short it is. Apple and IBM worked together on the G5 processor, aka the IBM 970, and it is "derived from" the Power4 architecture, but they're not the same. As far as I can tell, the G5 adds 32-bit stuff to the pure 64-bit Power4, so that it's binary compatible with 32-bit programs (ie no recompiling). It also takes some things out, such as having a dual core (two processors on one chip) and replacing it with a single core.

In general, the PowerPC architecture and the POWER architecture are very similiar, but not the same. The PowerPC was based on POWER1, but had a few different design goals. From IBM's PowerPC page:

The architecture had to:

• Permit a broad range of implementations, from low-cost controllers to high-performance processors
• Be sufficiently simple so as to permit the design of processors that have a very short cycle time
• Minimize effects that hinder the design of aggressive superscalar implementations
• Include multiprocessor features
• Define a 64-bit architecture that is a superset of the 32-bit architecture, providing application binary compatibility for 32-bit applications

There's a lot of stuff out there on this. IBM's page on the PowerPC describes it very well, and the POWER arch pages can show how it's grown: POWER2, POWER3, and POWER4. Wikipedia also has some good articles on the PowerPC and Power architectures.

Re:so when will we see Linux on a G5?

[revividus]

Obligatory gentoo zealot blah blah blah, but the gentoo folks have also been working on this.

At least this fellow has.

Re:so when will we see Linux on a G5?

[Carewolf]

No the POWER architecture is also 32/64bit. The main differences between POWER and PowerPC is the name. POWER supports a few legacy extention that PowerPC does not, and PowerPC has Altivec (IBM has a different name for it though).

The IBM 970 PowerPC is the POWER 4 processor, scaled down a bit to allow for cheaper massproduction, and with Altivec instructions added.

Btw. When IBM first announced the 970, it was promoted as the IBM processor for Linux desktops and workstations, it was only when Apple opened their eyes and embraced it that the focus changed.

Re:so when will we see Linux on a G5?

[fmorgan]

check yellow dog Linux: http://yellowdoglinux.com/ for Macs pre-installed with Linux. Besides their list of Universities & Corporations using it, last year the US Navy bought a few hundred Xserves with Linux.

Re:Slashdot is broken?

[Reverend528]

It's an inadvertant DoS caused by the ping flood that occurs whenever slashdot is slightly slower than usual.

Re:Article Text

[bluekanoodle]

Aha!. Your the reason I couldn't get on /. for the last hour;

Your blatant karma whoring has completely overwhelmed the single 486 running the site.

Been waiting for this for a long while

[EvanTaylor]

Finally they will start selling 970 workstations with RH or SUSE installed. Hell even MS said there would be like 5 64bit longhorn version, coupled with C#, we would get some real competition in the hardware business.

Futile

[pyth]

What IBM fails to realise is that their market share is negligible. Intel and AMD lead, hell, even Apple's CPUs are more popular than IBM's. IBM should face up to the facts or else they will go out of business. Nobody wants an IBM CPU these days.

As an industry expert, I recommend that they diversify into the console gaming market.

Re:Futile

[metlin]

Humour aside, what you may not realize as an industry expert is that they have enough patents to last them a lifetime even if they pursued a purely IP Licensing based business model :)

Besides, ever worked on labs that _really_ need to do serious number crunching (hint, hint)? They swear by IBM. PC clusters are a joke, Macs even more so.

I once had a discussion with a CEO of quite a big product development organization who was thinking of diversifying into Bio-informatics because they had done some pioneering research and had some patents and cool algorithms. Mind you, this is a really technically savvy guy with years of experience (who would probably even tell you Perl syntax) and respected by VCs for his experience and expertiese -- not a yuppie management guy.

One of his core business models for furthering the bio-informatics idea was to contact IBM and get them to design CPUs that would optimize the algorithms for certain vector and matrix operations. And he had enough information from IBM contacts who confirmed that if the idea proved viable, they would do so.

IBM still has that respect and trust among corporates that most other companies don't. And IBM has that trust factor for new research -- sure, they're not as big a market presence (relatively) as they once were, but they're definitely one of the better ones out there.

Re:Futile

[5.11Climber]

... Intel and AMD lead, hell, even Apple's CPUs are more popular than IBM's.

More popular by whose standard? Their market share may be negligle but it is definitely high-end. Companies (banking, FAA, etc.) will pay top dollar for machines that simply don't fail.

I work for an orgainzation that requires a minimum of 99.9999% uptime. We have been using IBM RISC-based gear since the RT came out because of this. We used some Sun gear for a while but those just didn't cut the mustard.

Re:Futile

[znu]

It's interesting you say the Mac is a joke for serious number crunching, and then immediately mention bioinformatics. That's actually an area where Apple has had some success. The Mac has always been fairly popular in biology for some reason, and a lot of the requests which convinced Apple to make a rack-mount Mac came from that sector. Apple is now offering pre-built Xserve clusters loaded up with G5-optimized bioinformatics software. See Apple Workgroup Cluster for Bioinformatics.

Of course, it's IBM's chip at the heart of this.

Re:Futile

[sundling]

"Apple's CPUs are more popular than IBM's".

Huh?! Apple doesn't make CPUs, IBM makes the CPUs marketed as G5. Where do you think the G5 comes from?? Motorola was the one who made G4 and I believe IBM was still a second source on those. I don't remember the specifics of the arrangement.

Re:Futile

[Anonymous Coward]

PowerPC is an open arch in the sense that anyone can implement it.

IBM designed the PowerPC arch, like intel designed the x86 arch.
Motorola implemented the arch in G3 and G4, like AMD can implement x86 arch in there AMD cpus.
IBM did the G5.

Apple buys G5 from IBM like Compaq buys Intel CPUs from Intel.

G3, G4 and G5 are only Apple's commercial names. For example, a G3, is a PowerPC 750FX.

Article are talking about the POWER cpus. POWER cpus are designed for robustness/availability not peak performance. PowerPCs and POWER both have the same instruction set but they are a few difference.

This article does not talk at all about the low-end PowerPC 970 G5. We are talking about high-end servers $$$.

Re:Futile

[idiotnot]

It's kind of open, as there are restrictions and licensing costs, but it's basically the same deal as MIPS or SPARC -- not very difficult for a fabricator to get involved if it so wishes. In fact, Samsung is manufacturing PPC chips for IBM, and may become a licensee.

As for Apple, the G-monikers say nothing of the manufacturer. My B+W G3 is a moto chip. My old iBook was an IBM. I have no idea who the manufacturer is -- but it's identified as a PPC7455, whatever that means (800MHz G4).

But you are right, POWER is a different chip, altogether. The 970 is based on the POWER4. And the forthcoming POWER5 is supposed to be a world-burner.

Not like I'll ever be able to afford one. :-)

Re:Futile

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel and AMD lead, hell, even Apple's CPUs are more popular than IBM's.

in little toy computers for people to play with? yes you are right.

Intel and AMD couldn't make a mainfraime or large scale server processor to save their soul. The only player's in the real computer arena are IBM,Sun and Silicon Graphics.

I strongly suggest you go out and try to use a real computer for a day instead of these toy-grade micro-computers sold at dell,hp and best buy. Even a $25,000.00 Compaq Proliant is a toy compared to the lowest end IBM mainfraime.

you'll learn what a real computer is all about. oh and microsoft couldn't write an enterprise grade multi-user OS if someone handed them the sourcecode. AIX is a wonderful piece of work with some very sharp edges. If IBM is trying to bring linux up to the point where they can replace AIX then microsoft is 100% doomed.

Re:Futile

[Anonymous Coward]

I write a correction to what I presumed to be a badly mis-informed post, and I get modded a troll. Brilliant.

Re:Futile

[marine_recon]

Guess what? They did. IBM chips have made their way into Gamecube, Xbox and the next gen Playstation. if thats not diversifying i dont know what is

Re:Futile

[sg_oneill]

What IBM fails to realise is that their market share is negligible. Intel and AMD lead, hell, even Apple's...

er? I'm not sure you gather IBM's market. Its big iron kiddo. I/O monstery , Fast-as-fury computation, freakishly humongous hard drives stuffing freakishly humongous amounts of data on em *fast*. Thats IBM's market.

And I suggest you keep your industry expertise to said console market. Methinx you make a fool of yourself.

Re:Futile

[Anonymous Coward]

So now we have 2 posts demonstrating your complete lack of a sense of humor! Why not go for the hat trick, assmunch?

Linux the future? / Slashdot down?

[phoinixuser]

Could this be it? the final catalist to send linux hurling down the throughts of every human being on the plant? Sorry ive been watching EVA to much... And did slashdot just go down for a bit? I just lost connection to it on 2 computers, granted its from the same internet connection but still...

Re:Linux the future? / Slashdot down?

[tornado2258]

Well I never lost connection but I wasn't getting any pictures and it was very slow for a while. It wasn't gone completely but we came very close.

Re:Linux the future? / Slashdot down?

[Anonymous Coward]

And did slashdot just go down for a bit?

It did. I was like, "OMG, Slashdot is... slashdotted!"

Re:Article Text

[bluekanoodle]

Sorry for replying to my own post, but before the grammar nazi's haul me away, I know it's supposed to be "you're", not "your".

Must use preview, must you preview, must use preview....

Re:Linux, the last OS? Or Debian?

[jhoger]

You could be right. But my guess is that Linux will continue to evolve to such a point in 10 years that we won't recognize it as as the Unix work-alike it started out as.

Maybe we'll just drop the term "the OS" and say "The Linux." But since some geeks (like me) may hold on to the idea that Linux is just the kernel, I hope that "The Debian" gets that place instead. It has a good shot since it allows for different kernels which will allows more freedom for innovation of the OS.

In other news...

[Black Parrot]

Darl sues IBM for making a press release when it was his turn.

Way better fit

[buddha42]

Good. Linux on Power is a way better fit that the linux-on-mainframe stuff that was all the rage a year ago. IBM has always positioned Power as a high-end unix platform, so this is more of a seal of approval on linux being a high end unix than it is an attempt to drive Power down into lower end markets.

Re:They appear pretty confident...

[MachDelta]

IBM doesn't need their legal team to destroy SCO when SCO is doing a great job of that themselves.

Yesterday

[Wesley Felter]

Yellow Dog for the G5 has been available for a while; it's working OK in my office.

Power Processor

[BrookHarty]

I really like how so many PPC based OS's are coming out, morphos, amigaos, etc. And with QEMU allowing cpu emulation on the PPC, soon it wont matter which CPU you have, you can run any OS you want.

Are we almost near processor independance day?

Re:Power Processor

[addaon]

POWER is not PowerPC, although the PPC 601 managed to run both instruction sets poorly.

Re:Power Processor

[znu]

POWER is supposed to be binary compatible with PPC. Anyway, with the introduction of the PPC 970 (AKA G5) the lines are getting a bit blurry, at least in terms of architecture (the chips are still made on different processes, with reliability being paramount for POWER and performance being paramount for PPC).

Re:Power Processor

[addaon]

POWER is absolutely not binary compatible with PPC. Even the 601 requires the OS to handle some illegal instructions in order to get POWER compatibility. They're also not source compatible, at the assembly level; they have different mnemonics for many instructions, and some instructions on each side are entirely absent on the other.

Both the binaries and the assembly sources are very similar, and could be mechanically translated... but they are just not compatible.

Re:Power Processor

[drinkypoo]

With the exception of the PowerPC 601 and the possible exception of the G5 (I don't know about this one), the POWER processors have more instructions than their PowerPC counterparts of the same generation and based on the same core. This is why MPC601 is supposedly so great clock for clock, but also so expensive and slow. In POWER, efficiency and reliability are the primary selling points, as you say. PowerPC's are speed and low power consumption (Well, low power consumption USED to be a selling point.) So, PowerPC binaries might run fine on POWER, but in general, the converse is not true.

Re:Power Processor

[Henriok]

The PowerPC 970 (aka G5) IS a POWER-chip, so AIX and Linux will run great on it, but it's not a PowerPC-AS-chip so OS/400 won't.

Re:Power Processor

[TheRaven64]

This is not quite true. The G4 and G5 series both have an AltiVec vector processing unit, while none of the POWER series do. No software that relies on these instructions (162 of them, if memory serves) will run on a POWER chip. I believe (although I may be wrong here) that the PPC970 (G5) instruction set is the POWER4 instruction set with the addition of AltiVec, although the PPC970 contains fewer execution units.

Re:Power Processor

[znu]

I didn't mean to suggest that PPC could run POWER binaries -- I know there are extra instructions. But POWER can run PPC binaries. Unless they need AltiVec, of course. And supposedly the PPC 970 isn't really a PPC chip. It's single-core variant of the POWER4 made on a different process, with an AltiVec unit added:

The PowerPC 970 design starts by remapping one of the POWER4 processor cores to 0.13-micron technology and increasing its frequency up to 1.8 GHz. Next, one of the L2 cache banks was resized to 512 KB. These POWER4 features were then complemented with a vector-processing engine and a redesigned bus interface to keep the 970 fed with data. (Link)

Re:Power Processor

[polyp2000]

Hey, that QEMU looks pretty interesting. Do you have any idea what Oses run on it? Is it good enough to be a VMWare replacement?

What about SCO on PPC's?

[SinaSa]

I for one, think IBM should be investing all their money and support into getting SCO Unixware running on their eServers! I mean, it's like that nice Darl McBride fellow says. Linux would be lightyears behind without SCO code! Why is IBM even considering using a mere clone when they could get the original?

Re:Slashdot is broken?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an inadvertant DoS caused by the ping flood

Slashdot rejects echo request.

That may be true.

[Anonymous Coward]

If so, it's very unfortunate. Although it's possible to incorporate anything into Linux, the poor quality and structure of the code means that many things are much more difficult to implement there than they would be in research systems, or even in some other UNIX systems. Solaris in particular has a very clean code base.

I do think there are things that would be too difficult to implement in Linux to be worthwhile, and if they ever turn out to be important it will be at the expense of Linux. Also, I think it is unfair to characterize Andy and his type as cultists. He has a lot more understanding of OS issues than Linus does. I'm not saying he would necessarily make better decisions in implementing an OS, but to write him and his community off like that is naive.

In fact, Linux has already lost a lot by rejecting academic input. As it expands to new places (new architectures, and to larger and smaller machines) it is getting more of that input in bits and pieces. It still feels a lot like the early Macintosh, where team members would omit their PhD from their resume when applying because management saw it as a negative. A significant portion of the contributions to Linux are from academia, but they have to slip in unnoticed because the community, and its leaders in particular, believe that academia has no value.

Re:That may be true.

[ksheff]

That's because they care about the code being submitted, not the titles accumulated by the person doing the submitting. Or maybe they see it as a sign of a pompous ass that may be more concerned with obscure theory than getting something to work. What would you consider the work done by Linus while he was getting his Master's?

Re:That may be true.

[sg_oneill]

I really do wish people would stop trying to hang andrew on a conversation he had with linus, like 10 odd years ago.

Andrew is a genius. He's implemenented so many damn things its mind boggling. Hey, so is Linus. But the domains are diferent, and so are the timelines.

Minix was ten years ago. Shit the web page seems to of not changed in about as much time.

Get over it.

What about an affordable platform for developers?

[Jack Hughes]

Now if there was a nice "low cost" i.e. competitive with Intel/AMD platform for an individual developer then that could really seed the development environment and get things going.

Even if IBM have to ship at cost, it would be a very good thing.

Your cat?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your cat all about? Is he/she/it good, or is he/she/it whack?

In conclusion, does your cat's breath smell like cat food?

Re:Your cat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha, I fooled you! I don't really have a cat.
Pretty good trick, huh?

Someone fell off the turnip truck.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a joke, genius.

Maybe this will pressure Intel for Centrino

[Linus Sixpack]

Intel has been really reluctant to help with Linux on the Centrino. This is worrying because it might be a glass ceiling for Linux on new hardware.

If Intel doesn't support linux on its new hardware we can go AMD & IBM and never look back.

ls

http://tuxmobil.org/centrino.html

Re:Maybe this will pressure Intel for Centrino

[Anonymous Coward]

If OpenBSD has done it, I don't see why Linux can't.

Re:Maybe this will pressure Intel for Centrino

[Mostly a lurker]

I did not notice much support from Microsoft for Linux on the Xbox, but that did not seem to be an insuperable obstacle. Some people will see Linux on the Centrino as an interesting challenge and there it will be.

Re:Maybe this will pressure Intel for Centrino

[Maxwell309]

I looks like binary only centrino support is on its way with an open source solution coming later, according to news.com

Re:Maybe this will pressure Intel for Centrino

[Juanvaldes]

I don't think Intel is panicing yet. That would be like saying Intel is in trouble because they haven't halped Apple get OS X running on Intel chips. Even if every linux user runs out and buys AMD chips tomorrow it would only tip a few points in the overall market, a loss to be sure, but not a whole lot of the overall pie.

Re:Maybe this will pressure Intel for Centrino

[Anonymous Coward]

No, neither can I. OpenBSD hasn't done it though. Assuming you even know what he is referring to.

Imbicile.

Re:Maybe this will pressure Intel for Centrino

[evilviper]

If Intel doesn't support linux on its new hardware we can go AMD & IBM and never look back.

I hate to tell you, but AMD's power management doesn't work all that well on Linux either. ATHCOOL seems to work for a select few motherboards, but most of us are left with out AMD processors operating at the max, all the time.

I can't speak for IBM's Power processors, but AMD isn't that great of an alternative, untill they take care of this whole HALT+BUS problem.

Re:Maybe this will pressure Intel for Centrino

[bangular]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/68/35052.html Looks like a start to me (though it's not power management, it's a wifi driver. But Linux needs all the wifi driver writers it can get).

Cat food?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is cat food all about? Is it good, or is it whack?

Re:Cat food?

[Anonymous Coward]

i whack off in my cats food

Re:Cat food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I piss in your coffee.

-- Your cat

Re:Linux, the last OS? Or Debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

In 10 years we will be lucky if Debian has KDE 3.2 in the stable distribution yes and has moved past kernel 2.4.

Favorite Thread

[Anonymous Coward]

This is my new favorite thread on all of Slashdot.

Way better fit-Level ground.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that linux on IBM "cross-boundaries" hardware is important. It's not a Linux on Mainframe, or Linux on PowerPC, or even Linux on IBM toasters, that's important. But a common OS that doesn't care what hardware's underneath. Train people on one OS, and reduce costs. Migrate them from you're cheapest offerings to the most expensive, and visa versa while they keep their software application base, and IBM keeps them as customers. As far as "seal of approval"? That happened with IBM's billion dollar investment. Much as the original IBM PC was the "seal of approval" for the personal computer.

Support for video devices

[Anonymous Coward]

That's more interesting.
Power had linux support for a while.
The power machines has to work completely!
Sound, video, nmetwork, powermanagement...

Re:Linux, the last OS? Or Debian?

[kfg]

It has been said that the day Linux refuses to open a file because the right ap isn't installed is the day that Linux ceases to be Unix.

It will also be the day I have to abandon Linux in favor of a more "user friendly" OS, in the way that I define user friendly.

I can't say that I'm happy with the idea that "Linux" could turn into a "brand," just a label which can be attached to any old thing without reference to what that thing is.

You can glue a red oval to a VW instead of a black circle, but that doesn't make it a Bugatti no matter what the script in the oval claims.

If and when Linux ceases to be Linus' Unix it'll be time to acknowledge the fact overtly.

At which point I may well find that the OS I have to use instead is. . . Linux.

KFG

Can I now buy a IBM Power & run Mac OSX on it?

[XMichael]

I think this is fantastic news! -- that is if I understand it correctly.

Am I reading that, IBM will be selling complete G5 Processor & Motherboards. Will I be able to pick up (probably gnutella copy...) a copy of OSX 10.3 and run it on this system?

I've always wanted a Mac, I've just never wanted to pay for a Mac!

Power Processor-The past awakens.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an "Independence day" joke in their, but it's late. Anyway I like all the forthcoming OS, and PowerPC because it's a nice chip to program for compared to the Intel horror, and the OS are a wellspring of ideas (many from fringe OSes) that proves the saying "Old OS never die. They just get reimplimented"

POWER, PowerPC and Apple

[Lulu of the Lotus-Ea]

Well, first thing, of course, is that Apple CPUs are IBM CPUs. For the G5, the whole design is from IBM; but even the G4s are fabbed by IBM (though designed by Motorola). So big blue likes the PowerPCs all around.

Still, the IBM announcement makes some sense of my IBM developerWorks editor's push for a rush job on an article about Linux on PowerPCs. Despite the rush, I think it turned out well. Take a look at:

Linux on Mac: a POWER programmer's primer

Re:POWER, PowerPC and Apple

[zbaron]

According to that article, it seems that that IBM is quite happy for Apple to supply PowerPC based workstations to run Linux on.

Re:POWER, PowerPC and Apple

[Johnny Mnemonic]

fwiw, I've submitted this article as a /. story. Hasn't been rejected (yet.) So you may get some recognition for this, and thank you for it.

Re:POWER, PowerPC and Apple

[Svartalf]

Nice article. Cute main page on your website.

Hopefully it means they are ready to sell

[Chuck Chunder]

A friend of mine is a Linux kernel hacker for IBM and a while ago he was telling me IBM got quite a lot of people asking for Linux over AIX on some of their hardware but that IBM had to say "no" because they couldn't deliver it. (Sadly my memory is fuzzy on the details)

Hopefully this announcement and the fact they have more external vendors on board means they are ready to push some product out the door.

maybe...

[t0ny]

I cant really state the validity of the points you raise, but I dont see how they are relevant in this instance (re:IBM). As has been stated many times, IBM is embracing Linux with the same enthusiasm with which the pointy-haired boss embraces unpaid interns.

Why? Because IBM wants to dump AIX. Why? Because AIX costs IBM money to support. Why? Because IBM is the only one doing AIX. Linux, on the otherhand, is being supported by tons of people doing it for little to no pay. Which means IBM can get rid of the dead bird around its neck, and jump onto the bandwagon which other people are pulling.

IBM isnt embracing Linux out of any kind of morality or evangelism. Its all about the money. Im not saying its a bad thing; quite the opposite. But lets view the situation for what it really is.

Re:maybe...

[mixmasta]

Yeah, but what good is pulling a bandwagon if no one gets on?

Re:maybe...

[broeman]

I don't really care that IBM is making money on Linux, that is a companys purpose. What is really interesting is that they want to give their knowledgde to the community, and the community pays back with better karma. I am maybe too young to acknowledge the monopoly IBM, since I always liked their high leverage of development (real development, not MS development).

Re:maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Before Linux IBM had to manage and support 3 completely seperate operating systems.

Now with linux it can replace the need for all 3 of them. (well sorta with the mainframe stuff.)

Isn't that the point of Open Source and Free Software stuff? Create inexpensive and open operating systems/enviroment were company/individuals can do business cheaply and effectively because the lack of artificial and twisted liscencing/contractural agreements?

Sounds like the pointy-haired boss is making a good choice on this one.

Re:maybe...

[Spoing]

1. Isn't that the point of Open Source and Free Software stuff? Create inexpensive and open operating systems/enviroment were company/individuals can do business cheaply and effectively because the lack of artificial and twisted liscencing/contractural agreements?

Nope, it's open first and the cost is a side-effect. A very tempting side-effect, but not the point. Otherwise, freeware should be gaining in popularity and wide spread use.

Re:maybe...

[DeBaas]

IBM likes Linux because they don't like the fact that they have to depend on Microsoft. The reason is not a childish one, but the fact that they are unable to control a large part of what they offer. The control is at a third party (MS). I don't think this has much to do with IBM anxious to dump AIX

Linux is the only viable option to break that dependance. And as a bonus, their powerpc architecture is now more appealing. There are nowadays many people that can make good use of a server running Linux. If I only look at my own company. We would never have considered a IBM AIX server. But an affordable IBM server running Linux is appealing, powerfull, robust and as it runs Linux, it runs what we use.

Re:maybe...

[VdG]

That's rather naive, although there are a few grains of truth in there.

IBM has historically been a hardware company, (now moving into services, but that's another matter). Consequently, the purpose of AIX was to drive hardware sales, at which it's done a pretty good job.

In the future, Linux may be able to serve the same purpose and so it may be in IBM's interests to drop AIX. However, until that time it is foolish to describe AIX as a "dead bird around (IBM's) neck".

Further, you may not be aware of this but the iSeries, (AS/400s) use substantially the same hardware as pSeries - even the latest Power4 Regatta technology. Clearly IBM have no objection to supporting two completely different operating systems for the same hardware if it helps to shift more boxes.

Finally, although there is a significant cost to IBM in supporting AIX, what makes you think it'll be any cheaper for them to support Linux on Power? Who but IBM is going to be able to support it on their latest and most expensive hardware? At the very least they'd have to invest a lot of money in making test servers available to Linux developers.

Re:maybe...

[retinaburn]

I don't agree with the 'wants to dump AIX' comment. AIX is ridiculously stable, has a great suite for system management and program installation. IBM won't dump AIX until they can convince themselves and their customers that the same or better functionality is available on Linux. I use AIX everyday and it PAINS me to go to linux.

Re:maybe...

[N1KO]

Freeware isn't popular with linux because of free software which gives you even more for free. On other systems, like windows, programs like winamp, kazaa and msn messenger are very popular.

Re:maybe...

[Spoing]

1. Freeware isn't popular with linux because of free software which gives you even more for free. On other systems, like windows, programs like winamp, kazaa and msn messenger are very popular.

I realize that. Freeware is at it's apex even under Windows, though, and open source / free software that includes code is a growing and thriving under all operating systems.

That said, there are quite a few freeware (and closed source) programs for Linux...just not nearly as many as the open source group.

Re:maybe...

[Spoing]

One further note...

There are open source / free software releases of each of the programs you mention -- either from the same code base or cloned versions.

Re:maybe...

[t0ny]

IBM likes Linux because they don't like the fact that they have to depend on Microsoft

Im sorry, but that is a hugely ignorant statement. Do you even know what we are talking about? Nobody is going to put Windows on an IBM mainframe.

The reason is not a childish one, but the fact that they are unable to control a large part of what they offer. The control is at a third party (MS). I don't think this has much to do with IBM anxious to dump AIX

You dont even know what Im talking about. Do a little research before you post ignorant comments.

And as a bonus, their powerpc architecture is now more appealing

I dont think IBM mainframes even USE PowerPC... Do you even KNOW what a mainframe is?

We would never have considered a IBM AIX server. But an affordable IBM server running Linux is appealing, powerfull, robust and as it runs Linux, it runs what we use.

Maybe you should just stick to answering the phones, and leave these arguments for the adults.

Re:maybe...

[t0ny]

However, until that time it is foolish to describe AIX as a "dead bird around (IBM's) neck".

In the long term, it is definitely a dead bird. I never said IBM was going to be dumping IBM this week (or even this year). But its definitely going to happen, and they wont be at all sad to see AIX go.

Clearly IBM have no objection to supporting two completely different operating systems for the same hardware if it helps to shift more boxes.

I believe that last part (about selling boxes) was my point. However, Im sure IBM is very much opposed (at a higher level) to having to support two different operating systems. Especially when one of them costs them much less than the other.

what makes you think it'll be any cheaper for them to support Linux

I think a better question is what makes you think it wont?

Who but IBM is going to be able to support it on their latest and most expensive hardware?

Seems like a pretty good reason to stick with IBM consulting services...

At the very least they'd have to invest a lot of money in making test servers available to Linux developers.

They already have, and they make quite a lot of money charging corporations to work with those test servers.

Re:maybe...

[DeBaas]

Before you reply in this insulting manner, read a little better. Nowhere did I imply that anyone runs Windows on mainframes.
What I was talking abount is that IBM doesn't like it that in the low end market they can hardly get around windows.

I know enough about mainframes and in fact AIX (I have worked with AIX as a matter of fact, not on a Mainframe though but on an RS6000).

What I was talking about was the reason IBM likes Linux. Nowhere did I mention mainframes. IBM doesn't like the dominance of windows. IBM is a lot bigger than a mainframe company

Re:Linux, the last OS? Or Debian?

[afidel]

I don't think it even needs to be Debian persee. If you write the low level stuff for POSIX and the high level stuff for a portable framework then the only OS stuff that matters is the toolset and most OS's ship with the GNU tools. There is bad software out there that isn't easily portable but most stuff today that is available for Linux can fairly easily be ported to the *BSD's and Solaris.

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

In general, we do not make things plural in English by adding apostrophes. "nazi's" is wrong, "nazis" is right, dumbass

Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Maybe we'll just drop the term "the OS" and say "The Linux." "

Ummm, that's "The GNU/Linux"

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[Reivec]

When will people get over this silly distinction? Poeple don't go around saying GNU/Solaris or GNU/BSD. And I don't call my windows Adobe/Windows because I may have a lot of adobe software!

This whole argument is obsurd, yes without GNU we wouldn't have linux as we know it, their contribution should not be forgotten, but the OS is LINUX!

If it executes a linux/ELF binary, then it is LINUX, not GNU/Linux. I think GNU tries to downplay the importance of a kernel with their stat on their web page stating that linux is only 3% of the system by volume in X common disto. Who gives a flying rats ass? Linux can be used in lots of different ways, not just a desktop. There may be aplications where there isn't much or any GNU software used at all... yet guess what.. STILL LINUX.

GNU is great and all, but the only truely GNU OS I know about is hurd, so if you are truly obsessed on using GNU/whatever, then start using hurd. :-P

Now time for all the GNU mods to say this is flamebait :-P

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[jhoger]

RMS is the Great Man, but if we put in all the slash terms into GNU/Linux that really belong there, Linux would have a name more appropriate for an Ent.

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[ncr53c8xx]

This whole argument is obsurd, yes without GNU we wouldn't have linux as we know it, their contribution should not be forgotten, but the OS is LINUX!

This is not about someone's ego. Without GNU and the GPL, the software wouldn't be Free. And the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[Spoing]

1. If it executes a linux/ELF binary, then it is LINUX, not GNU/Linux.

While I agree and *don't* call Linux GNU/Linux, there are operating systems that execute Linux binaries without modification and they are not Linux. The BSD Linux compatability layer comes to mind.

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[TheRaven64]

While I hate to say anything that might be construed as support for the GNU/Universe naming convention, consider the following system:

A Debian install, on top of a NetBSD kernel. The shell is bash (GNU), and this interprets all of the init scripts. The loader comes from the GNU project. The next thing to be launched is XFree86 (not GNU, and not GPL'd). On top of X, runs gdm (GNU again), which provides a graphical login screen to the user. Once you log in, you are presented with the GNOME desktop environment (no prizes for guessing what the G in GNOME stands for...) You browse the web a bit with Epiphany (can you guess?) and mangle some figures with GNUmeric. Perhaps you decide you don't like Epiphany, and download the Linux version of Opera. Of course, this runs fine on NetBSD's Linux binary compatibility layer.

By your definition, this is a Linux system (i.e. it executes a Linux ELF binary). I would contend, however, that there is a lot more GNU (i.e. lots) than there is Linux (i.e. none) in this system.

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[Ed Avis]

There may be aplications where there isn't much or any GNU software used at all...

Care to name one?

Of course, if you run a Linux system without the GNU C library and other GNU software then there is no reason to call it 'GNU/Linux'. Similarly, you can run a GNU system with most of the same software but no Linux kernel.

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[RoLi]

I also think the "GNU" prefix is pretty stupid, but for a different reason.

We have names to tell things apart. Since Linux is (almost) always a system with GNU-libraries, it's pointless to add it everytime.

The crusade to add the "GNU" prefix is doomed to fail because the natural thing to do with redundant prefixes is to drop them.

Besides, GNU isn't really running that much on my system anyway. KDE is much bigger in terms of lines of code and I don't use much GNU-programs anyway (no emacs).

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[bjarvis354]

The point isn't that you are using any GNU programs actively (although I bet you are), but that Linux was built using the GNU tools such as the C compiler.

If it wasn't for the GNU C compiler you would not have a kernel (or anything else for that matter) to begin with.

As Linus said himself when he released Linux

"As I mentioned a month(?) ago, I'm working on a free version of a minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers. It has finally reached the stage where it's even usable (though may not be depending on what you want), and I am willing to put out the sources for wider distribution. It is just version 0.02 (+1 (very small) patch already), but I've successfully run bash/gcc/gnu-make/gnu-sed/compress etc under it."

I don't think Linus would deny the contribution of GNU to the success of Linux.

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[Uma Thurman]

Linux is a always a system with the GNU libraries and the Linux kernel, so it's pointless to add it every time. From now on, the name of the system should just be " ".

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[neurojab]

> I don't think Linus would deny the contribution of GNU to the success of Linux.

I'm sure you're right. However, it's not necessary to name a program after the compiler that produced the binary. That's why the kernel is called "Linux" and not "GCC/Linux". There are indeed a lot of GNU programs in my Linux install. There are a lot of BSD programs, X11 programs, programs not written by GNU but still licensed under the GPL, a few commercial applications, etc...

The point is when you declare that an "operating system" is defined, and indeed named after its userland programs, then I'm a proud owner of a GNU/X11/BSD/Loki/Freevo..../Linux system.

Therefore it's not GNU/Linux because that's leaving out all the other userland programs. If you restrict the naming convention to just the kernel, things are a hell of a lot easier. "Linux" is a perfectly good name by itself.

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[bjarvis354]

I agree. Here is what Linus had to say to OS News on the matter:

What is your opinion on RMS insisting calling Linux as GNU/Linux?

Linus Torvalds: I don't mind what rms calls the system. I don't think his arguments for the naming are very valid, but hey, at the same time I really couldn't care less.

I agree with that. When people ask I say "my OS is Linux." Then I move in for the kill and say "the best version IMHO is Debian GNU/Linux." I figure its like "I run windows....Windows NT, etc."

But really it doesn't matter that much. I think Linux is grand.

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[jon3k]

We're not talking about the compiler. We're talking about the C libraries which its built upon. You can compile it with whatever you want, and you'll still need the GNU C libraries.

In essence, without GNU, there would be no Linux.

As much as I hate the term GNU/Linux, theres valid reasoning behind the naming.

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[jdray]

...but that Linux was built using the GNU tools such as the C compiler.

I work on my car using Craftsman wrenches, but I don't call it my Sears/Volvo. Neither do I call it my Chevron/Volvo because of the brand of gas I use, or the Bridgestone/Volvo because of its tires.

Re:Forshortened, and three heretics ago...

[sketerpot]

We'd need a tree structure, too. Something like, ((KDE, GNOME)/XFree86/), bash)/GNU/Linux, only much bigger and thornier. I wonder if the Ents are into Lisp....

Re:They appear pretty confident...

[vpscolo]

All IBM has to do is just sit there whilst SCO burns through its cash reservers. In a court case I know who is going to last longer

Rus

"shrinking" development.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now if there was a nice "low cost" i.e. competitive with Intel/AMD platform for an individual developer then that could really seed the development environment and get things going."

The game console and PDA market would be perfect.
How many have learned "alternative" architectures from such devices?

Re:Linux, the last OS? Or Debian?

[Frymaster]

It will also be the day I have to abandon Linux in favor of a more "user friendly" OS

linux is user friendly... it's just picky about its friends.

Re:Linux, the last OS? Or Debian?

[jhoger]

The change will be so gradual you won't even notice it.

But I'm sure you'll still be able to

apt-get install curmudgeonly-cli-environment

And be perfectly happy even then...

This has been obvious for a while

[heironymouscoward]

Remember the battles between network protocols, and how TCP/IP inexorably took over the whole domain until "network = TCP/IP" became a self-evident truth.

The same is IMO inevitable with Linux because it has solved the main issue of how to provide the necessary services on any platform in a non-partisan manner. The people who "get it", like IBM, are swiftly moving to a "Linux everywhere" strategy on which they can build a solid business of services and products. The people who still don't get it, like Microsoft, insist that Linux is an illegitimate upstart with no credentials.

The operating system as a product has become almost completely commoditized. There is simply no compelling reason for someone with free choice to pay for OS software today.

However, don't say "last", this would be wrong. Linus is most likely the "last OS" in the same sense as TCP/IP is the "last internetworking protocol". But new models of computing that provoke new concepts of organization and software are inevitable. Linux is not infinitely plastic and there is an infinite space beyond its reach that will be filled with the upstart OS platforms of the future.

Re:This has been obvious for a while

[Spoing]

1. Remember the battles between network protocols, and how TCP/IP inexorably took over the whole domain until "network = TCP/IP" became a self-evident truth.

   The same is IMO inevitable with Linux because it has solved the main issue of how to provide the necessary services on any platform in a non-partisan manner. ...

I do remember the old protocols as I ran a test lab with a dozen servers -- mostly using different propriatory protocols.

Linux isn't based on propriatory interfaces, so making a "Linux clone" work transparantly with Linux binaries -- let alone source code -- is not only possible, it has been done already -- even for the PPC!

Re:This has been obvious for a while

[dolson]

Where can I download Linus?! ;)

Re:Linux, the last OS? Or Debian?

[kfg]

What an incredibly peculiar notion.

KFG

Slashdot == IBM marketing machine?

[MS_is_the_best]

Am I the only one, who thinks IBM gets too much free advertising on ./ lately? (or just the only one who isn't ignoring these advertorials?)

Ok, they are the target of a riduculous case of SCO, so airtime related to that is fine for me.

But their still just one company, embracing linux. It is nice, that a large company does that, but I think we know that already (for years!) So please posters, be a little bit more critical against articles, like this.

IBM Deserves some good press.

[Linus Sixpack]

I think the SCO defence has earned them a few brownie points.
I think Sourceforge has earned them a few brownie points.
I think the eclipse contribution has earned them a few brownie points.
And I personally think their Java stuff and Develper Shed has helped as well.

If it has raised their profile and gotten them some good press -- they deserve it.

LS

You can be too bitter or distrusting.

Re:IBM Deserves some good press.

[Mindcry]

didnt they also release viavoice and visualization stuff freely for linux as well? it was a long time ago, but i still remember hearing about that too...

the ads they play saying linux is good about every thirty seconds during the NFL (american football) conference championships was kinda funny too...Its just all part of there "we really mean it" campaign i guess.

But they HAVE diversified into console gaming.

[metroid composite]

The GameCube's chip is designed and manufactured by IBM. Sure, it's a partnership between IBM, Nintendo, and Panasonic, and they'll use the "Nintendo" name for marketing purposes, but they have a hold in that market (the same way Sony had a hold with the SNES before going larger scale...).

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't call him a dumbass... he may not be native english writer.

Plus, its not nice.

In conclusion, I dont have a cat

IBM's own Distro?

[NavelFozz]

Why don't they make their own distro? Or buy Suse or Redhat? It would make sence, since they are getting to be so Linux oriented.

Re:IBM's own Distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM has an enormous archive of patents, many of which are so broad that they're used in Linux (in some way or another). If they were to release their own Linux distro, they'd effectively be releasing their 'IP' under the GPL, and complicate the situation.

That's the reason I've heard before, anyway!

Re:IBM's own Distro?

[Spoing]

1. Why don't they make their own distro? Or buy Suse or Redhat? It would make sence, since they are getting to be so Linux oriented.

IBM is a consulting / contracting company with products as a second source of revenue. Distributions of Linux aren't a big source of revenue to a company like IBM.

If they have a "IBM Linux", it gives other companies a target to attack. If they don't, IBM is seen as a 'team player' and can't be attacked as easily.

Re:IBM's own Distro?

[bitflip]

Why bother? Right now, they get the benefits without the costs or the risks. Let other companies spend their resources on it. Practically free R&D and labor.

Re:IBM's own Distro?

[pleasetryanotherchoi]

AIX is based on UNIX. Linux is based on UNIX. Why bother?

Re:IBM's own Distro?

[hendridm]

Because there is no money in selling a free OS. What about RedHat you say? RedHat makes its money on service agreements and support. Why not just cut out the part that doesn't make any money? That's what IBM does. They take what's already available and make it work for big business. There's big bucks in that.

A joke you say?

[MalleusEBHC]

PC clusters are a joke, Macs even more so.

Haha!

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

"be a native English writer.", "it's not" and "I don't" please.

We're all on the internet here, remember?

[Lord Kano]

Besides, ever worked on labs that _really_ need to do serious number crunching (hint, hint)? They swear by IBM. PC clusters are a joke, Macs even more so.

What? Do you think that NCSA doesn't do "serious number crinching" with THIS ? Guess what? They're Dells, powered by Intel Silicon.

How about Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory it's running a linux cluster with 1,116 nodes.

One of his core business models for furthering the bio-informatics idea was to contact IBM and get them to design CPUs that would optimize the algorithms for certain vector and matrix operations. And he had enough information from IBM contacts who confirmed that if the idea proved viable, they would do so.

Next are you going to tell us that this guy works in the "Double '0'" section of the British Secret Service?

IBM has made some revolutionary discoveries in microprocessor design. IBM is still one of the most innovative companies out there. IBM still produces some serious Big Iron, but let's not over state it.

LK

Re:We're all on the internet here, remember?

[warren96]

The situation metlin (258108) states is that IBM will create specialized equipment for businesses that relate a need for it. This equipment will not be for general sale and those not in the transaction will not know of it. Not even divisions inside IBM itself. An example would be the old Deep Blue equipment created for a purpose and not known of until IBM publizied it. All customer contracts are closed so there are many interesting computing/networking devices IBM has created that no one, outside the company/org that purchased it, will ever know of.

Linux monoculture?

[dpilot]

Even a Linux monoculture is still a monoculture, and still dangerous. Maybe we'd better hope BSD really isn't dying, like the troll says it is.

Re:Linux monoculture?

[RoLi]

Wrong, you can get Linux from many different sources (from scratch, from SuSE, from Mandrake, from debian, etc.) and in many different variations (even on a single distro the packages you install can vary greatly) and on many different platforms (x86, PPC, ARM, etc.)

Linux domination is not dangerous at all, actually it is great because it enables competition on a lot of other levels.

For example now it's pretty hard or even downright impossible to make an ARM-based desktop because of Window's lock on the desktop and because it runs only on x86. As soon as Linux dominates the desktop this problem goes away and we will finally see free competition between CPU-makers and CPU-architectures.

Re:Linux monoculture?

[dpilot]

I still differ with you.

You don't even have to go back very far to find the privilege escalation problems in the kernel, itself. That affected *every* distribution. Even given that, I believe we would be safer with a Linux monoculture than we are currently with essentially a Windows monoculture.

But I'd rather see no monoculture at all, and I believe that would be safer, yet.

To some extent, the RFCs form an 'Internet monoculture' and spam is a result. But it's a necessary monoculture in order to interoperate. IMHO, we need to undertake another round of RFC work to figure out the correct balance between trust and anonymity before something gets imposed on us.

Actually iSeries and soon zSeries will be Power..

[Shivetya]

the iSeries (new name of AS/400) and pSeries have been on the PowerPC processor type for many years. They were one of the first 64bit computers available for commercial purposes. The zSeries will join the iSeries on PowerPC processors beginning with the G5.

The iSeries can already run Linux as a hosted OS. While where I work hasn't allowed us to do so it is not a complicated process. The iSeries OS and microcode is C/C++ based. Many Unix applications can already be ported to the box via PASE (Portable Application Solutions Environment). The hosted OS gets a lot of benefit from the base OS of the system involved including use of many of the attached devices like high speed tape drives and libraries.

IBM is just levarging existing hardware, hardware that has reliablity that you do not get in PC based servers.

That's GNU/ the OS

[Ohreally_factor]

you insensitive clod!

Sure, and OS/2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with OS/2 certifications hanging around like myself can tell you that IBM's backing and listing of 'hundreds of partners' doesn't mean shit in the real world. Does this mean Linux will succeed or fail? No - it means I don't think IBM's involvement guarantees success for any technology. The graveyard of dead ends (including several years of my own career) is a testament to that.

Re:Sure, and OS/2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still angry after all these years?

Operating systems such as OS/2 follow the same Darwinian laws that we humans follow. It died because it was weak.

Re:Sure, and OS/2?

[duffbeer703]

Good point. One can become an "IBM Partner" by filling out a short questionaire.

Re:Sure, and OS/2?

[Anonymous Coward]

OS/2? Get over it, remember Microsoft had their hands in OS/2 and that had a LOT to do with the lack of support from vendors and why OS/2 failed. Now that those vendors know how Microsoft operates, they have a lot more trust in IBM and Linux.

STFU N00BLET!!!~1` OMG TEH PWNED!!`

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:What about an affordable platform for developer

[TheRaven64]

How important is access to the architecture these days? I regularly develop code on my PowerBook that is deployed on a dual Xeon visualisation workstation, or a SGI Onyx when it needs that extra bit of speed. As long as you stick to writing portable code, don't rely on a particular byte-order, and put anything platform specific inside #ifdefs then your code should run on any POSIX-like system (assuming that your supporting libraries do).

The Bob

[FatSean]

The Bob will take us up Heaven's Chimney and Linus will be there!

Re:Can I now buy a IBM Power & run Mac OSX on

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you want to pay $13,000 for a Mac, 'cause if you do I'm sure there are plenty of people who'll be willing to build you something with custom casing that will run OSX in a suitably ugly box for your tastes..

Actually started a few years ago....

[GlobalMind]

The iSeries has been supporting Linux for a couple of years now -- although frankly it's just really catching on in any significant numbers.

In fact it isn't just the POWER chips that will run it. Essentially the entire current iSeries line will run Linux.

In January 2002, IBM released V5R2 of OS/400 and the POWER4 processor on the platform on the model 890. Last year, they pushed the POWER4 chip down into a few other models.

Good stuff to come this year....stay tuned!!!

K.

Re:Actually started a few years ago....

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Yes (we had SuSE on our p690), but before it just ran PowerPC linux in 32 bit mode. This runs it in full 64 bit POWER crunches Itanium to dust mode. This is a new enhancement.

Re:Actually started a few years ago....

[GlobalMind]

Yep you sure could. As for this year, I believe you're gonna need SLES 9 with the 2.6 kernel to run on POWER5. Of course, p & i are effectively the same thing today anyway.

AND in 2004 with POWER5....well, stay tuned....cause they're just getting closer.

K.

Aren't 32 processor machines cool anymore?

[tooley]

Last time I checked, I was excited by the prospect of a 32 processor system. Perhaps they'll send me a free demo unit. I wish they marketed like AOL. I wouldn't mind getting a few of these in brightly colored mailers from time to time.

http://www-132.ibm.com/content/home/store_IBMPub li cUSA/en_US/eServer/pSeries/pSeries.html

Re:Aren't 32 processor machines cool anymore?

[sapbasisnerd]

You will not run a single Linux image on 32 processors on such a box for quite some time.

I can't off the top remember how many CPUs are supported in a single image, 4 or 8 but sure as heck not 32.

You can of course partition the machine and run multiple virtual machines but if you need to run something that will scale in a single SMP image but doesn't know from how to scale loosely coupled (certain DBMS workloads leap to mind) then your only choice at present is AIX.

Now given AIX's "Linux Affinity" you should be able to re-compile and run any well behaved Linux code but can't honestly say I know how true this is but that's the theory.

From a strategic point of view

[roomisigloomis]

IBM is embracing open technologies fully because then, its competitors become its allies. In fact, it is a great strategy because it removes them from going in to potential customers and saying "our IBM stuff will meet all your needs". Instead (and this was also one of the reasons they bought the consulting firm a couple of years ago), they can say "we can bring in and support whatever hardware/software combination best meets your needs, whether or not it is made by IBM". How does Linux fit into this strategy? Well, what we have in the software industry today is a situation analogous to one where different car manufacturers have different gear shifts. Toyotas have one type, Fords have another type. In addition, Toyota only makes SUVs, Ford only makes two-seat convertibles and other companis only make one type of car. If you want to keep things simple, your wife and kids' cars should be Toyotas if yours is so that all of you you will have the knowledge of how to drive each others' cars so you can interchange them. If you need to haul a large load and you don't know how to drive the specific company that makes trucks' gear shift, you bring in a consultant skilled in that gearshift who has his own truck. Now, imagine in this situation that a company called IBMW comes along and says they can teach anybody to drive any car (or truck), no matter what the gearshift, no matter what gear shift system they know. They will make tons of money. Add to that the fact that their brand of car (the Linuxwagen) can be driven by anyone and comes in different models for different needs and they will make even more money. The bottom line is that certain aspects of every industry must be standard or interoperability and interchangeability (and therefore, usefulness and functionality) suffers. IBM strategy is visionary in that it call for dropping proprietary file formats (gear shift mechanisms) and standardizing under open standards. It's much like no one holds a patent on railroad guages but every rail car manufacturer in the US knows which guage to use so that they can be sold to anyone for use anywhere. Linux is open; it can be used anywhere. Finally, Henry Ford said that he would trade his car manufacturing company for a auto repair and body shop company. IBM has essentially done this. They are in the process of retreating from making cars (proprietary operating systems like AIX) to maintaining and customizing them (its purchase of Price Waterhouse consulting operations). It is a very smart move: there is more profit in the business of helping existing businesses.

PowerPC != POWER and other older news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, Linux has been running on POWER4 since at least May 2002 thanks to SUSE (-personaly witnessed this). Second is that PowerPC is a stripped down varient of the POWER line. They are separate architectures. POWER came first, PowerPC came 2nd. Apple will not be putting a POWER4 cpu in there workstations anytime soon. How do I know this? One POWER4 MCM (8 cpu's on a die) at 1.5GHz is about $150,000. While single cpu POWER4's have made it into IBM's lower pSeries workstation line they still aren't cheap. I have not seen anyone license POWER cpu's anywhere yet in the last decade of their existance so again I dought they will end up in your next Mac.

Re:PowerPC != POWER and other older news...

[sapbasisnerd]

Actually the MCM is a ceramic carrier with a thyroid condition that holds 4 chips, each chip has 2 CPUs. I think the ceramic carrier is 85mm x 85mm has somthing like 5100 "pins".

The unit that goes into the midrange and entry servers and the workstations is just the same chip on a more familiar looking ceramic chip carrier. There is no single CPU POWER4 chip, single CPU machines have a dual CPU chip, but the second CPU is disabled in microcode (and one suspects in most cases the disabled half of the chip did not pass QA).

And while I'll grant you there is a a price differential the cheapest of the entry servers (p615) it is not massively more expensive than a server class Xeon MP machine of similar power certainly not 1/8 of $150,000 per CPU.

Altruism is derived from selfishness

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course IBM isn't embracing Linux out of any kind of morality or evangelism. That's just nature, all nature.

For example the reason I'm not a sociopath, and why you're not a sociopath, is because you fear consequences - i.e. you are worried about what will happen to you if you do something bad.

You don't steal from your friends because you want (actually need) friends, you are nice to them for selfish reasons. You don't kill your enemies, not because you're nice, but you don't want to go to jail or be killed by one of their friends. I do dog rescue and a lot of people tell me why a nice good thing that is, the truth is that I like dogs to the point of benefiting from simply being around them. I do it for entirely selfish reasons. I wouldn't do cat rescue, I wouldn't do bum rescue either come to think of it.

Likewise, IBM does things for entirely selfish reasons that look altruistic. Red Hat started that million dollar defense fund to attract more customers and get some nice free advertising, because they know SCO won't sue anybody and even if they do, RedHat thinks they will prevail. HP indemnified for the same reason. Microsoft paid off SCO because SCO was helping them, although inadvertently - not because MS is nice, and probably not because they had a pre-arranged deal with SCO.

People who do altruistic things that don't benefit them in any way are either 1) crazy 2) unaware of the fact that what they are doing benefits them in some way or thinks it will benefit them in some way.

Want to know why religious people try to be "good"? They want to go to heaven. That's also why they go to church, even when they hate church. It's why they evangelise too. If you look, selfishness can explain just about every single "good" thing you do whether it's good or not. I'm an atheist, but I still try to be good, because if I'm not, I think it will come back to haunt me, in short, it's dangerous to be "bad". I'm no fool.

The key to happiness BTW, is doing things that help you and others. IBM knows this and so long as we have the same means to different ends, everybody is happy. Today the means is Linux. Tomorrow it won't be.

Re:Altruism is derived from selfishness

[t0ny]

For example the reason I'm not a sociopath, and why you're not a sociopath, is because you fear consequences - i.e. you are worried about what will happen to you if you do something bad.

I once shot a man in Omaha just to watch him bleed

Microsoft paid off SCO

Huh?

The key to happiness BTW, is doing things that help you and others. IBM knows this and so long as we have the same means to different ends, everybody is happy. Today the means is Linux. Tomorrow it won't be.

At least someone else here understands.

A rising tide raises all ships.

IBM most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

will be the first company to license Mac OS X for its own hardware.

Re:IBM most likely

[chez69]

no, because they already have AIX which is a superior server os and linux or AIX for workstations. why would they would they want to support an unproven os (unproven in the big corporate market where they make most of their money)?

Re:IBM most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you used AIX?

It frankly sucks in the high end.

Though Linux isn't all that much better.

Re:IBM most likely

[chez69]

yes, every day. works great.

Evolution of Linux

[jhines]

My first Unix was v7, 25 years ago.

You still move files, dd things, and have a shell script, make, cc, and so on.

Yeah, a few options have changed here and there, but the fundimentals of the OS are easily familar if you time travel fowards or backwards a couple of decades.

Re:Evolution of Linux

[dyte]

I agree that 25 years in the future the shell prompt will still look the same (for backwards compatibility), but, recently linux has taken a big step towards mainstream. Most people who buy mac's don't care to see the shell prompt, but it's there!

Apps

[101010]

Now if we could get them to port Smartsuite and Client Access. They're missing the boat, I loved Smartsuite, it would be sweet on Linux.

Re:Apps

[sapbasisnerd]

I love Wordpro, much superior to Word. 1-2-3 vs. Excel is a coin toss, Freelance is crap. Never really used Approach so I can't say.

Can we have GNU-free distro, just to pissoff RMS?

[Glasswire]

Ah yes, when will someone release a simple distribution that uses non-GNU components so we can tell RMS:
SEE! There CAN be Linux without GNU, so calling it all GNU/Linux is wrong!

Processor specific??? Porting i386 software???

[PSaltyDS]

This quote confuses me (OK, that's not hard to do, just looking for some instruction here): "IBM has also signed up 300 vendors to provide software to run under Linux on Power processors."

Should this sentance end "run under Linux." without the "on Power processors" part? My question is this, once Linux is ported to the Power processors (that part's already done, right?) then would software be written to run on a Linux OS, but only on a Power processor? Would software written for Linux on i386 run on Linux with a Power? Does porting the kernel not bring all the existing software to the new platform? Does software on the new platform not run on the old one?

Combine this with the JS20 blades, and talk power!

[ckd]

The IBM BladeServer JS20 is a dual processor G5 system on a blade. Admittedly, they're limited to 1.6GHz instead of the 2GHz of the Apple desktops or XServe G5, but when you can pack 14 of them into a 7U chassis, it may still be a better choice.

#include <beowulfjoke.h>

Re:Processor specific??? Porting i386 software???

[SoTuA]

Does porting the kernel not bring all the existing software to the new platform? Does software on the new platform not run on the old one?

Nopes. Porting the kernel will, uh, port the kernel. Note that it doesn't mention Open Source apps. It says just apps... you can run closed source apps on linux. Those apps need to be ported to the PPC arch to use with the PPC linux kernel. Without this, you can't just pop in your x86 binaries on the PPC kernel.

Re:Apps - Linux version of Client Access exists!

[Anonymous Coward]

Client Access has been renamed "iSeries Access".
There are two client products: iSeries Access for Windows and iSeries Access for Linux. iAL is a free, closed-source download and includes an ODBC driver and 5250 emulator and a few other tools. Its much smaller than the Windows product but, still pretty sweet. available at:

http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/acc es s/linux/

It runs on intel and PPC platforms.

Re:Actually iSeries and soon zSeries will be Power

[chez69]

The zSeries are the mainframes. they run a CISC chip.

do you have a source that says zSeries will be moved to the POWER platform? that would be rather cool.

Re:Processor specific??? Porting i386 software???

[pclminion]

Does porting the kernel not bring all the existing software to the new platform?

It brings a lot of it... But not all, by any means.

Many programs which manipulate binary data are hard-coded with the assumption that the data order is little-endian, as it is on Intel. These programs will break on a big-endian architecture like Power.

Also, some programs may rely on memory protection functionality which is not available on a particular architecture (for example, on Intel, it's impossible to mark a page as "execute-only." Programs which depend on being able to mark pages as "execute-only" thus cannot function on x86 processors.)

As another example, a multimedia application which relies on certain real-time assumptions may not function on a platform which cannot make those real-time guarantees (perhaps because it has a crappy interrupt architecture).

And of course, there's always software that's mainly written in C, but also has little portions written in assembler. Clearly, these programs won't just magically compile on a completely different processor.

Re:Can I now buy a IBM Power & run Mac OSX on

[tsangc]

I've always wanted a Mac, I've just never wanted to pay for a Mac!

If you can't afford a cheapie eMac, I doubt you'll want to pay for a IBM reference board.

Mod parent down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your slashdot post is wanting of truth. Motorola G4 cpus are fabbed in MOS-13, a Motorola fab.

Your article is also wanting of a fact-checker. POWER didn't come from the AIM consortium; PowerPC did.

If you can't get the X11 working on a Debian system, you shouldn't be saying 'couldn't get to work' without trying to get help.

Testing and support

[Wesley Felter]

Sure, Oracle can "just type make" to create a Linux/PowerPC version of Oracle, but offering a fully tested and supported version takes effort.

Re:Combine this with the JS20 blades, and talk pow

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

This is running on real POWER chips, full 64 bit, multiple core on one die chips. This is not the (scaled down, subset of POWER) PowerPC chips. I don't think POWER Linux would not run on a PowerPC (article doesn't say), though it has a small chance of being possible; the G5 is closer to POWER architecture than any previous incarnation of PowerPC, but I still doubt it.

That said, PowerPC Linux would run just fine. In fact PowerPC Linux already runs on the p6xx series, just as a 32 bit Linux, not full 64 bit. You can already run PowerPC linux on that blade/XServe. The situation gets better, IBMs SOI technology allowed a huge power cut going for their G5s moving to 90mm. Run faster, less electricity and cooler than previous chips. Life is good again.

Re:Processor specific??? Porting i386 software???

[idr]

Among other things, POWER is 64-bit and big-endian. Most current x86 is 32-bit, and all x86 is little-endian. If people don't write their file load / save code properly, the endian difference can be a major PAIN. :(

Why on an iSeries?

[frank_adrian314159]

Although I am happy to see IBM give users the option to run Linux on their existing hardware, I can't figure out why anyone would want to take their iSeries and turn it into a Linux box. After all, they already have an OS on it that's much more secure, efficient, scalable, and easy to maintain. I run Linux on my boxes at home and I see the potential advantage to replace AIX with Linux on a pSeries (except when you get to large clusters), but I just don't see what advantage one gets out of running Linux on an iSeries.

Actual review of POWER server on Linux

[perlow]

Linux Magazine reviews the IBM p615

Re:What about an affordable platform for developer

[hbkeultjes]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=3D03/01/22/1730 217&mode=3Dthread&tid=3D1=00
was the original Slashdot link that apparently does not exist any more so see
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5 009
for the concept behind such a low cost device.

Would a company like Samsung, the world's largest TFT LCD maker and a PowerPC licensee be willing to step up to the plate and make this kind of PowerPC SoC based product?

Any purists who would like to read the unabridged version of the article, plus updates on how to accomplish a modular LCD with LinuxPC concept, please e-mail me.

Henry Keultjes
Database Scientifics
Mansfield Ohio USA
lastnameatearthlinkdotnet

Re:Can we have GNU-free distro, just to pissoff RM

[Anonymous Coward]

give it a try and report back the results of your efforts

Re:Can we have GNU-free distro, just to pissoff RM

[Dahan]

Heh, I've wanted the same thing... there's NetLSD, but they never produced anything. I'd give it a shot if I had some spare time :)

Re:Futile and Apple CPU

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a question of definition really.

Apple in fact does make CPUs. It doesn't make processors though.

Like I said, it depends on how you define Central Processing Unit.

TV Comercial

[Tmack]

Maybe its old news, maybe someone else already commented on it, but IBM aired a TV Comercial featuring Linux as a 9 year old kid. Just kind of took me by supprise seeing an ad on TV for Linux.

Tm

Re:TV Comercial

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the young, relatively unknown bleach-blonde kid who has all these people yapping at him trying to give him "knowledge" -- then he grows up, realizes he had a fscked up childhood, and writes songs about his mom and starts dissing every pop artist out there. "And Linus said...nuthin, you idiots, Linus is dead, he's locked in my basement..."

IBM's distro: Eminem Linux -- y'all fscked.

you are not the only one

[twitter]

An obvious troll named "MS_is_the_best" asks:

Am I the only one, who thinks IBM gets too much free advertising on ./ lately?

No, troll, you are not the only one. Bill Gates wants you to be thinking of his crap instead. He does not care if you hate it or love it, so long as it occupies your thoughts. You and he must be crying everytime Slashdot writes presents anything else. I, on the other hand, am glad to read about anything but that crap that I don't use except when forced. As fewer and fewer people are forced to use that crap, there will be less and less to think about. Your task master will return to his former irrelavent state.

IBM, on the other hand, is entirely relavent. They are and making lots of money off free software without having to close it up or control freak it. IBM and others are in a position to offer the world much greater quality software at much lower cost than any closed source code vendor. Closed source crap has been dead for a while. IBM is not here to defend, assail or even mention it. IBM is here to burry the rotten corpse and anyone still clinging to it. Take notice or die.

Re:you are not the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you are so far out there that you're probably talking with the pretty shiny little angels. I'd like to have some of the stuff you're smoking. How many times do you need to say "crap"? "Task master"? "Take notice or die"??? WTF??

But do keep it up man, you're the best argument I have against open sores. Don't give up!!