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Doubt it. Most mainframe shops probably run more than linux. All IBM has to do is say zOS is only supported under VM, and that's that.
I suppose there are some linux-only mainframe shops, but I need to see a couple of cases where $100,000 per processor hardware makes sense in a linux-only shop before I believe it's more than just a good way for IBM salespeople to make Porsche payments.
What I don't get is what it is actually for. I mean, if you paid for the mainframe for the usual reasons, it seems natural you wouldn't mind paying for VM, which has been doing the job for 30 years. Heck, if IBM thought it would matter, sales wise, they could give VM away.
Not that I care that they did it, I just wonder who is going to use it. But then I feel that people read too much into the whole 390 Linux thing: IBM had no viable UNIX for the mainframe, some customers have the mainframe as their strategic platform and wanted to consolidate a little UNIX here and there, and Linux was convenient. Some see it a crown jewel in OSS acceptance (because mainframe is teh awesome!), but I don't really get how enabling one of the world's most closed computing systems is consistent with OSS goals. But then again, I don't buy mainframes 







Member since:
2006-03-13
IBM's got to be a bit miffed at the moment, considering that this is in direct competition with their own proprietary hypervisor to run dozens of Linux instances under.