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IBM Supporting Linux On Power Processors 225

Posted by simoniker from the mighty-morphin-ibm-rangers dept.
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."
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IBM Supporting Linux On Power Processors More

IBM Supporting Linux On Power Processors

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  • Linux, the last OS? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:21AM (#8052364) Homepage Journal
    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? Or Debian? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jhoger ( 519683 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:45AM (#8052398) Homepage
      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.
      • 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'
      • 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.
      • you insensitive clod!

      • Evolution of Linux (Score:3, Informative)

        by jhines ( 82154 )
        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.


    • > 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? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by znu ( 31198 )
        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.

        • 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

    • That may be true. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by 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
    • 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.

    • maybe... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by t0ny ( 590331 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:54AM (#8052649)
      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.

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

      • Re:maybe... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by broeman ( 638571 )
        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... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by DeBaas ( 470886 )
        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 o

      • Re:maybe... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by VdG ( 633317 )
        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 thi
      • 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 str

      • Re:maybe... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by retinaburn ( 218226 )
        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.
    • 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.
        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 clo

    • 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.
      • 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

      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

      • 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 run
    • 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 re

  • The march... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Today the corporate arena, tomorrow the whole world!

  • What are they thinking? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Pieroxy ( 222434 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:37AM (#8052372) Homepage
    In a few month, they'll have to give everything away to SCO anyways...

  • IBM Linux strategy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:39AM (#8052375)
    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.
    • 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.
    • 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 licens

  • so when will we see Linux on a G5? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ralph Spoilsport ( 673134 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:39AM (#8052379) Journal
    Linux on an IBM PPC is just a short hop over from a G5.

    When?

    RS

  • 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 (Score:3, Funny)

    by pyth ( 87680 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:43AM (#8052390)
    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 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by metlin ( 258108 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:11AM (#8052498) Journal
      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 (Score:2, Informative)

        by znu ( 31198 )
        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 [apple.com].

        Of course, it's IBM's ch
      • PC clusters are a joke, Macs even more so.

        Haha! [apple.com]
      • 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 [uiuc.edu]? 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 wo

    • POWER, PowerPC and Apple (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lulu of the Lotus-Ea ( 3441 ) <mertz@gnosis.cx> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:52AM (#8052645) Homepage

      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:

    • Re:Futile (Score:4, Informative)

      by 5.11Climber ( 578513 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:56AM (#8052656)
      ... 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.
    • The GameCube's chip is designed and manufactured by IBM [ibm.com]. 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...).
    • 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.

  • In other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:46AM (#8052403)


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

  • Way better fit (Score:3, Insightful)

    by buddha42 ( 539539 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:46AM (#8052404)
    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.
    • 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

  • Power Processor (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:53AM (#8052432) Journal
    I really like how so many PPC based OS's are coming out, morphos, amigaos, etc. And with QEMU [bellard.free.fr] 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?

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

  • Maybe this will pressure Intel for Centrino (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Linus Sixpack ( 709619 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:09AM (#8052491) Journal

    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

  • Can I now buy a IBM Power & run Mac OSX on it? (Score:3, Funny)

    by XMichael ( 563651 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:44AM (#8052616) Homepage Journal
    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!

  • Slashdot == IBM marketing machine? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MS_is_the_best ( 126922 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:30AM (#8052806)
    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. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Linus Sixpack ( 709619 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:54AM (#8052880) Journal
      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.

  • IBM's own Distro? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NavelFozz ( 33778 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @04:11AM (#8052929) Homepage Journal
    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? (Score:2, Informative)

      by 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? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @07:19AM (#8053504) Homepage
      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.

  • PowerPC != POWER and other older news... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 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.
  • 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 Lin

    • Re:Processor specific??? Porting i386 software??? (Score:4, Informative)

      by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @12:03PM (#8056218)
      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.

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

  • The IBM BladeServer JS20 [ibm.com] 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>
    • 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 b
  • 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 [ibm.com] 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
  • Maybe its old news, maybe someone else already commented on it, but IBM aired a TV Comercial [ibm.com] featuring Linux as a 9 year old kid. Just kind of took me by supprise seeing an ad on TV for Linux.

    Tm

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