Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 10:28:00 -0800 From: Johnson David <DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Mainframe support Message-ID: <200403291028.01102.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> In-Reply-To: <200403290441.i2T4fscK023387@cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au> References: <200403290441.i2T4fscK023387@cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au>
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On Sunday 28 March 2004 08:41 pm, Charon wrote: > IBM is currently pushing Linux on its big iron offerings. What > similar capacity options are available for FreeBSD based > installations? Has IBM actually ported Linux or are they running a > smoke and mirrors setup with Linux running in a vmware like > environment? IBM ported Linux itself to their mainframes. It wasn't a community project in any sense of the word. We could do this, but I don't think anyone here can afford an IBM mainframe. Heck, most of us couldn't afford the real estate to house one :-) There are practical and philosophical problems with Linux on their mainframes. First, this is a niche market. The only customers are going to be banks and other transaction-heavy Fortune 500 companies. It's a "brownie point" for Linux, but nothing to be ashamed of if you don't have it. Second, Unix and mainframes have completely different skill sets. Going with this solution means you need both mainframe and Linux administrators. Philosophically, from the Free Software side of things, it's kind of strange. You have a Free Software kernel running in a VM in a proprietary operating system on proprietary hardware with only one vendor available for support. Overall, there's few advantages for the customer, but large advantages to IBM. It would be nice if FreeBSD could run in the Z-Series, if only for the brownie points we would earn. But it would be little more than an experiment. You're not going to run a webserver on an IBM mainframe, or make it your development workstation or desktop. The only applications that would make sense could still be done cheaper on a cluster. If FreeBSD needs to expand out of its workstation/server niche, the logical area to expand to is not the mainframe market, but the embedded market. David
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