This is exactly what the suits have been asking for. Red Hat and Pacific Hi-Tech can talk all they want, but when a major player like HP has the coporate credibility of billions in sales and decades in the industry. When HP steps up and says they will keep the SAP server running, IS managers relax. They go out, play a round of golf, have a few beers, maybe go to a movie. Remember, IS managers don't care about Open Source, or proprietary systems, or monopoly, or The Right Thing. They care about reliability, scalability, data integrity, and uptime.
Frankly, I'm surprised they could pull it off. I work in an HP shop, and believe me, it's almost impossible for HP to move this fast on ANYTHING. HP will be a big player in Linux for the forseeable future, if only because several layers of management must have staked their entire careers on this move.
I also think optical recording technology is improving at a faster rate than internet connections are -- meaning that for the forseeable future, a box full of CDs/DVDs/whatever will have a heckofa lot more bandwidth any internet connection you or I can afford (ok, it's got lousy round trip time and packet drop is really expensive -- you still can't beat the bandwidth any internet connection you or I can afford (ok, it's got lousy round trip time and packet drop is really expensive -- you still can't beat the bandwidth!
Or as it says in/usr/share/games/fortune/fortune.dat;
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes. -- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
To use Linux, you have to hack, pure and simple. Challenges, roadblocks and obstacles are not technical problems, but the essence of the experience. The machine works for you and with each command, program, trial or error, your confidence grows a bit.
All his other prose to the contrary, this is what drives me to use Freenices. I don't put up with the troubleshooting, the steep learning curve, the late nights hacking, etc, etc, etc just to get a better OS. I also do it because I enjoy steep learning curves, technical troubleshooting, and late nights spent hacking. This is what got me started with FreeBSD three years ago, it's what keeps me going with *BSD and QNX now, it's what got me into Xenix fifteen years ago, and It got me into DOS ten years ago.
Two litres of Coke and a hard disk crash, who could ask for more?
Well, HP-UX is annoying, clunky, non-standard, poorly documented with an amazing quanitity of obscure and hard-to-configure-or-use utilities. If you can tolerate these shorcomings in Linux, you can tolerate them in HP-UX
Boots to single uer mode. no networking, no swap, no multi-taking, no job control, no process control, no signals, no shared memory, console only.
Macintosh theme
Disable all tty support, cripple multi-tasking, use xdm for the boot shell. Good networking.
Win95 theme
Spend 3/4 of processor cycles in noop instructions. Move the swap to a limitlessly self-enlarging file on the regular monolithic filesystem. Eliminate any concept of file ownership. Randomly lockup/crash/reboot three times per 8-hour shift. (Really, our network people won't even look at a Win95 problem unless it exceeds that threshold.) Introduce random mutations to all communication protocols.
HP and SGI are looking at the long term here. The biggest threat to their high-end server business is Wintel and NT. By supporting Linux on their low-end workstation lines, they weaken Micrsoft, and more importantly, gain mindshare. I work in HP-UX these days, and believe me, anybody who can administer a Linux box acn administer an HP-UX box.
For both companies, Linux is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate that *NIX solutions are more stable, more powerful and more scalable than NT. It will help keep current HP shops "in the fold" and slow the growth of NT in their target markets.
I really don't believe either company intends to fragment Linux. They view it as a complement to their OS offerings, not a threat.
Slashdot Mirror
And, of course it runs NetBSD
This is exactly what the suits have been asking for. Red Hat and Pacific Hi-Tech can talk all they want, but when a major player like HP has the coporate credibility of billions in sales and decades in the industry. When HP steps up and says they will keep the SAP server running, IS managers relax. They go out, play a round of golf, have a few beers, maybe go to a movie. Remember, IS managers don't care about Open Source, or proprietary systems, or monopoly, or The Right Thing. They care about reliability, scalability, data integrity, and uptime.
Frankly, I'm surprised they could pull it off. I work in an HP shop, and believe me, it's almost impossible for HP to move this fast on ANYTHING. HP will be a big player in Linux for the forseeable future, if only because several layers of management must have staked their entire careers on this move.
I also think optical recording technology is improving at a faster rate than internet connections are -- meaning that for the forseeable future, a box full of CDs/DVDs/whatever will have a heckofa lot more bandwidth any internet connection you or I can afford (ok, it's got lousy round trip time and packet drop is really expensive -- you still can't beat the bandwidth any internet connection you or I can afford (ok, it's got lousy round trip time and packet drop is really expensive -- you still can't beat the bandwidth!
/usr/share/games/fortune/fortune.dat;
Or as it says in
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
-- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
To use Linux, you have to hack, pure and simple. Challenges, roadblocks and obstacles are not technical problems, but the essence of the experience. The machine works for you and with each command, program, trial or error, your confidence grows a bit.
All his other prose to the contrary, this is what drives me to use Freenices. I don't put up with the troubleshooting, the steep learning curve, the late nights hacking, etc, etc, etc just to get a better OS. I also do it because I enjoy steep learning curves, technical troubleshooting, and late nights spent hacking. This is what got me started with FreeBSD three years ago, it's what keeps me going with *BSD and QNX now, it's what got me into Xenix fifteen years ago, and It got me into DOS ten years ago.
Two litres of Coke and a hard disk crash, who could ask for more?
Well, HP-UX is annoying, clunky, non-standard, poorly documented with an amazing quanitity of obscure and hard-to-configure-or-use utilities. If you can tolerate these shorcomings in Linux, you can tolerate them in HP-UX
:)
BSD forever
Danby
DOS theme
Boots to single uer mode. no networking, no swap, no multi-taking, no job control, no process control, no signals, no shared memory, console only.
Macintosh theme
Disable all tty support, cripple multi-tasking, use xdm for the boot shell. Good networking.
Win95 theme
Spend 3/4 of processor cycles in noop instructions. Move the swap to a limitlessly self-enlarging file on the regular monolithic filesystem. Eliminate any concept of file ownership. Randomly lockup/crash/reboot three times per 8-hour shift. (Really, our network people won't even look at a Win95 problem unless it exceeds that threshold.) Introduce random mutations to all communication protocols.
HP and SGI are looking at the long term here. The biggest threat to their high-end server business is Wintel and NT. By supporting Linux on their low-end workstation lines, they weaken Micrsoft, and more importantly, gain mindshare. I work in HP-UX these days, and believe me, anybody who can administer a Linux box acn administer an HP-UX box.
For both companies, Linux is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate that *NIX solutions are more stable, more powerful and more scalable than NT. It will help keep current HP shops "in the fold" and slow the growth of NT in their target markets.
I really don't believe either company intends to fragment Linux. They view it as a complement to their OS offerings, not a threat.