Oracle will finish switching its 9,000-person in-house programming staff to Linux by the end of 2004, the database powerhouse said Wednesday.
In October, the company finished the Linux transition for the 5,000 programmers of its Oracle Applications software. Now the transformation has begun for those who work on the database product, said Wim Coekaerts, director of Linux engineering, in an interview at the CeBit trade show in New York.
Linux is ready for some desktops?
Well remember most of these 5000 employees aren’t the average Joe computer users. The majority of them are developers. In some cases depending on the user Linux is ready for desktop usage.
I use Linux for development at work. I do php and MySQL development for my employer developing online applications. I ssh directly into the server and do real time editing… Anyway my production went up 300% when I switch from windows a little over a year ago. I think this is a good move by oracle.
Anyway my production went up 300% when I switch from windows a little over a year ago. I think this is a good move by oracle.
In case people don’t read the article, and might assume something from this statement. The developers moved from Solaris to Linux. Just wanted to clear that up before this turns into a “this has gotta hurt MS thread”.
IBM’s moving to Linux, Sun’s moving to Linux, SGI sells linux systems. are there any commercial UNIX vendors (SCO excluded) that aren’t putting a considerable amount of work into Linux?
and is there anyone who is moving systems to commercial UNIX (BSD variants/derivatives don’t have a commercial base) at the rate people are moving to Linux?
This is great for Linux, but could we be nearing the end of commercial UNIX? is there anything left that commercial UNIX offers that can’t be obtained by BSD or Linux? (besides massive licensing fees that is)
are there any commercial UNIX vendors (SCO excluded) that aren’t putting a considerable amount of work into Linux?
SCO puts a lot of work in to Linux?
I’m sure you didn’t meant work as in coding and creating applications, not putting effort into attacing Linux
I get tired of people endlessly debating if Linux is ready for the desktop. Of course it’s ready, people have been using it for years. It’s not without it’s flaws but it’s used all over the world. How about these 200,000 users here:
http://rodrigo.gnome-db.org/news.php?25/May/2004
linux and bsd will ultimately mean the end of commercial unix. but it’s a good thing really. over time a lot of things become a commodity, and in this case operating systems are becoming one. this is GREAT for the user because it means in the future software choices will be much wider for *nix based platforms without reliance on some ancient unsupported and updated proprietary unix.
commercial entities have little justification for uniting under one operating system. luckily it took linus and the gnu folks to create a viable platform to change all this by opening it up and removing the profit incentive out of keeping the base system and kernel closed.
jamin, it really isn’t yet. i’m a long time linux user and i can still say that. the only distro that’s close to being ready for the desktop is fc2, and it’s not by much.
It is for me. It works and I am happy. The endless debates are tiring though.
Linux is ready on the corporate desktop. Yes people, say whatever you want about the home desktop, but Linux is ready for the corporate desktop. Which is more important than the home desktop, because that’s where the money is. Once you’ve gained enough market share on the corporate desktop, it’ll be easier to gain some market share on the home desktop too. Stop bashing Linux like it’s the work of satan just because it has almost no market share on the home desktop.
And for some people, like me, and a few of my friends, Linux *is* ready on the home desktop too.
“Symantec Corp. chief executive John Thompson said Wednesday his company is considering whether to use Linux operating system software to run its desktop computers instead of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows.”
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/May/05272004/business/170021.asp
use anymore windows without at least cygwin installed…
but i’m a developer…(not 300% increase in productivity but at least 200% thank to tail, grep, ssh, cvs some of my collegues are still using notepad, ftp,… )
developer developer developer 🙂
My company is already seing the added value of open source
project but is not ready to switch to linux…maybe in 1-2years ….
I’ve successfully converted my home office clients & servers to SuSE Linux 9.1 w/o a hitch.
I’ve gotten my wife and my elderly mother using it w/o any troubling issues at all. In fact, I hear a lot of “ooh, that’s pretty!” and “wow, that’s a cool trick Windows didn’t do!” more than I hear any complaints.
If my wife (stubborn, opposed to change) and my mother (completely technically-challengend AND stubborn) can use it w/o missing a beat, I’d say it’s a go!
Also, I can quit worrying that my wife will destroy her PC time and again by accidentally opening an infected email or installing something that shouldn’t be there. Yet, when she wants something new, she can browse the packages on YaST and install at-will, if needed.
Personally, I’m a software engineer, I find SuSE a little *too* easy, but I love the access to the underlying system when and if I’d like to toy around!
This begs of a joke starting with:
“How many Oracle programmers does it take to …”
:]
“and is there anyone who is moving systems to commercial UNIX (BSD variants/derivatives don’t have a commercial base) at the rate people are moving to Linux? ”
MacOS X is pretty BSDish (granted in a NeXTStep-Mach sort of way). So basically the most widespread desktop unix out there is BSD based. So I guess there is room for both Linux and BSD.
Ironic that Unix is back to were it started: open. As soon as the vendors in the 80s gained a foothold using the openess of Unix, then they closed it down and became stagnant. Now it seems unix is open again, and seems to be picking up momentum again….
This goes far beyond technical viability. This is about market viability. When you see a major customer dump a longtime architecture partner, the nails are bing pounded into the coffin.
Sun desperately needs to show new major clients using Sun hardware to differentiate in a way other than price, because on price Sun is simply not going to win.
Sun was killed in workstations, now it is being killed in servers. Best bet is to take the very high road like Cray and SGI and forget about mass market.
The difference is that you are technically competent and know how to hunt down drivers, recompile kernels, and fiddle with configuration text files if need be.
It’s the same situation with the corporate desktop. You’ve got people there that can handle drivers or other problems that information workers might have.
This is a totally different situation for the average home desktop user. When most hardware vendors are on board and ship linux drivers on cds that can be installed by clicking on setup.exe then you can talk about linux entering the mainstream. Until then, mainstream acceptance of desktop linux is a pipe dream.
Give it 10 years or so, and it might have 10% of the market share. Even that is a bit optimistic. Most people don’t install windows themselves, it just comes with the computer. Maybe Sun can make a dent by selling extremely cheap computers installed with JDS.
I can see how a *nix developer would be far more productive if he was on a *nix box.
when programming and doing admin types of tasks, Nix is more productive, it is nothing wrong with windows it is just how it is setup. and when dev’ing for nix on win i can see how you would be less productive then if you where using a nix workstation.
-Nex6
This week at work we’ve had one XP machine each day come into the shop to be “fixed” because it wasn’t runnign anymore.
One machine had to be rebuilt entirely from scratch because a virus destroyed too much of it.
The others were running anywhere from 5 to 15 copies of some spyware program.
Of course none of these people are able to fix their own computers.
So tell me, how is windows any more ready for the desktop??
This is a totally different situation for the average home desktop user. When most hardware vendors are on board and ship linux drivers on cds that can be installed by clicking on setup.exe then you can talk about linux entering the mainstream.
Again with the FUD…Downloading drivers is usually not necessary for Linux: the vast majority of hardware is supported by the modules that come with any stock kernels. Nvidia modules are one of the few exceptions, but then again they provide an easy-to-use installer on their website (also, some commercial distros such as Mandrake offer nvidia-enabled kernels).
Hardware compatibility with Linux was an issue a couple of years ago, but that’s no longer the case – especially now that USB has become the new standard. You’ll have to find a better argument than that (such as the dearth of commercial games for Linux).
At least you acknowledge that it is ready for the corporate desktop. And since the corporate desktop is the gateway to the home desktop (that’s how the IBM PC became so popular), then I’d say the future looks bright indeed!
… eq mess ** 2.
sigh… I guess there is no choice these days. linux effectively killed all os development, like a weed.
“Give it 10 years or so, and it might have 10% of the market share. Even that is a bit optimistic.”
On which analysis are your numbers based on?
“sigh… I guess there is no choice these days. linux effectively killed all os development, like a weed.”
right. oracle is a mess and linux is a mess. now run away
“and is there anyone who is moving systems to commercial UNIX (BSD variants/derivatives don’t have a commercial base) at the rate people are moving to Linux?”
HP, that owns the alpha and compaq, is not very ‘active’ in linux, but does sell some linux systems.
ok, why would oracle, a software company be embracing the GPL. alot of the ‘free and open’ linux distributors have failed.. forceing them to have nonduplication rules and integrating copyrights into the distros. this must be horrible for sun.
here’s why some of the hardware companies are switching to linux:
1) IBM made AIX for one platform, one hardware system, AIX and z/OS are not competeting in the OS market–makes no sense to have them if Linux is there and people will develope it and support it. Same thing with HP, dell, SGI, etc. HP could get into the IA-64 OS market but i doubt they ever will.
2) Sun decided to enter the OS market by releasing Solaris for AMD64, x86, and continuation for SPARC. i think sun distributing linux was a horrible mistake since they are in the OS market. i could understand if sun would make sure some systems can run windows and linux by saying Certified this and that..bottom line sun is different from the other Hardware makers since its already in the OS market. but it shoudl make sure customers can run whatever OS they want.
Oracle embracing the GPL will only cause problems down the road for them…. as supporting GPL in the enterprise while having closed commercial software may work for the short term–but not the long term unless if they can outperform anything any open source organization funded by other companies can do. I think IBM’s technique of ‘balancing’ open source software and commercial will fire back at itself.
bad decision oracle. should switched to freebsd lol
:Oracle embracing the GPL will only cause problems down the road for them…. as supporting GPL in the enterprise while having closed commercial software may work for the short term–but not the long term unless if they can outperform anything any open source organization funded by other companies can do. I think IBM’s technique of ‘balancing’ open source software and commercial will fire back at itself.
:”
i guess you didnt even bother to read. oracle isnt embracing gpl. its using and marketing oracle as a product and developing it in linux as a platform. not giving out source code or anything like that
by choosing linux as its development platform it’s indirectly embracing its license.. It may seem strategicly as its rapid popularity…
Oracle (and IBM) embrace linux not because of GPL or linux popularity, but because it allows them to sell/lease ready-to-user solutions without depending on “other company” platform (Oracle) and for the widest range of hardware possible (IBM & Oracle).
Pls remember, neither ora nor ibm sell “programs” like ms or symantec. They make money on services and “solutions”.
They could as well use bsd, it just happened to be linux. IMHO it was ibm that actually decided for all other biggies – after ibm’s decision their options are … limited.
No, it isn’t.
This is the same FUD every time…
The GPL (and similar licenses) put limits and obligations to those that DEVELOP using it.
If you are a user the only paragraph of the GPL that has something to do with you is the one that says that NOBODY can impose limits to the usage of the GPLed software, for any reasons.
It also says that if you do NOT agree to the GPL you are entitled to use the software anyways, you just cannot modify it.
So stop trolling and move along…
i do guess embracing it is a strong word to use… i still think its indirect support of it though
anyway..moving along…
The only threat to Oracle from the GPL is MySQL which is eating away at the bottom end of its market and slowly moving up.
Using GPL software themselves is not going to put Otacle in a situation that makes them in any worse position in this regard.
I am sick of BSD trolls who hate the GPL. BSD is a wonderful operating system. For a number of purposes it is better than Linux and I believe a mixed operating system ecology where interoperabilty is achieved by Posix compliance is a good thing for computing and the internet. The BSD’s will play an important role in this. But when BSD supporters start joining in the Miscrosoft/SCO FUD campaign against the GPL they are working against their own best interests.
But when BSD supporters start joining in the Miscrosoft/SCO FUD campaign against the GPL they are working against their own best interests.
That comment is FUD. BSDL supporters are not “joining” Microsoft’s FUD campaign. They disliked the GPL before Microsoft came along. Please stop trying to connect the two together.
i used to be a fan of the BSD license, and have used it on previous projects, but i think it really hurts developers.
say i create an awesome ftp and telnet client and an awesome networking stack for BSD under the BSD licence so that people will start using it as a networking operating system, and then someone like Microsoft scoops in takes all the code and uses it for themselves (which they did) without giving anything back? sure they have to give credit to the developers, but that goes into a text file that no one reads. basically you’ve developed something for another company without getting paid for it, or credit fot it, and now the company is trying to sell it back to you.
i’m not saying the GPL is better, but at least it forces people who use the code to use it on the same terms as the developers who originally wrote it. you don’t have a guy on one end benefitting monetarily from the work of others without putting a lick of work into it.
i know there’s some flaws to the way i presented that argument, but look past my words, take the ideas and fill in the missing pieces. i’m not a lobbyist, i’m a software engineer.
I don’t understand why you care who uses your code. So they take it and sell it for a million dollars a seat- what happens to your code? Nothing. Your code is free for anyone to use, almost however they want. Why are you going to get into a hissy fit because someone is using your code? Call the wah-mbulance I suppose.