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Qantas Ditches Linux for AIX
An anonymous reader writes "Australia's No. 1 airline Qantas will shift their underlying platform running its internal finance systems from Linux to IBM's AIX next month as part of a wide-ranging technology transformation project. 'We're moving from a Linux platform to an IBM AIX environment — we did that to address some stability issues we were having', said Suzanne Young, Qantas group general manager for finance improvement and segmentation. The decision was made last year, as part of the planning for the rollout."
AIX still exists? Why?
Agreed. They will be back. We should leave some kneepads hanging near the door for them.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Writing this as AC, because many here will most likely don't like this comment, but...
.msi file is it? Same with things like editing xorg.conf to get a 10button mouse to work, which inevitably leads to a few failed boots because of some tiny errors, or editing the IP-tables.
Linux has the problem that it's too fragmented. There are 20 million distro's out there, and not one that's as easy to use and as workable on various hardware as Windows.
People should stop trying to make their ultimate distro number 20million1 and just make a few distro's that are adaptable, and that actually work.
The linux nerds are too much like "ooohw, that's easy, just pop up bash, and run #tar zxvf program_name.tar.gz #configure #make #make install #make clean
Well, that's not really easy for the average user that's used to double-clicking a
It's just not user-friendly.
Same with hardware support. Linux users should pressure companies more to provide Linux drivers, or like that initiative started a while ago, where spare-time programmers offer their services to create Linux-drivers under non-disclosure agreements. I've got an HP Color LaserJet 1600. Doesn't properly work in Linux. I've got a Logitech Cordless Optical Trackman. I haven't been able to get that to properly work either.
Or how about phone synchronising software?
I love linux, I really do, but to be frank, useability, hardware support, etc, sucks big time. Even if it's there, it's impossible to implement for johnny average.
Linux users and programmers should get their acts together, and stop making the millions of fragmented distro's, and make a few that actually and properly work. Where hardware works just as easy as it does on Windows, where you can tell the firewall to show a pop-up if a program wants internet access instead of silently blocking it.
I know that if we all combine our efforts we can make an operating system that's both easy to use for john average, aswell as powerfull enough for the 1337, and just works on all hardware be it a Core2Duo, AMD64 or PPC, but we gotta unite because currenty we still ain't achieving much, and are always a bit behind on stuff that even windows just supports.
my 2 cents..
The flip to AIX has nothing to do with stability. IBM is Qantas's systems support vendor. They actually have the ability to recommend system level changes to Qantas in the Guise of helping Qantas out. AIX also means new P series hardware installations. Hardware installation in the enterprise space are insanely expensive. Since the majority of the cost has support not the actually gear. This move to AIX is clearly motivated by money. Lots of money for IBM. Qantas was sold the system stability story and they bought it. Now IBM the primary vendor of also the bleeding edge "EQ" system also has more time to iron out the MONSTER bugs with the software system and get to charge Qantas for, system porting, new hardware, systems consultation and EXPENSIVE consultation hours. The only thing wrong with the Linux installation was that the system builds of Linux being used were not documented at all by IBM. Thus they were impossible to maintain. Let alone build again the same way. This whole port to AIX stinks of poor management and greed.