On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 12:39:59AM -0700, Rick Kelly wrote:
> The computer industry seems to be in what I would call the "silly season".
> 
> 1. IBM claims to have spent $1 billion US on Linux and is pushing it like
>    crazy.
> 
> Reality:
> 
> You can buy IBM x86 servers with Linux from their website. It doesn't seem
> like you can buy Power based systems with Linux from their website. They
> apparently have a Linux mainframe solution (you still need OS/390 or z/os
> to partition the system for Linux).

Your information is a few weeks out of date I think. 

IBM has a new box they're coming out with that has been crippled to
not run normal MVS (or VSE?). It does run VM, and it does run Linux. 
I think the box is being sold with some number of years support for
VM and Linux. 

Also, IBM may be factoring into that 1 billion USD things like the 
instructions they built into their new processors to replace function
calls to things like strcpy(). Yes, they have a strcpy instruction
now. (Weird.) 


You know, with a VM system tailored to spin up Linux virtual machines
in a jiffy it might be simple to convince people to try out NetBSD/390. 
One day. 
-- 
Kevin P. Neal                                http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/

"It sounded pretty good, but it's hard to tell how it will work out
in practice." -- Dennis Ritchie, ~1977, "Summary of a DEC 32-bit machine"