Linux On The Mainframe, Revisited

A few weeks ago, we joined in a lively discussion across many e-newsletters about whether Linux on a mainframe was a good idea.

Sun’s Shahin Khan, who didn’t start the idea of Linux on mainframes (it’s IBM’s), did start the dialogue, on January 29^th, with a letter aggressively arguing that it’s a terrible idea (See Opinions March 8, http://www.wohl.com/wa0198.htm).   In early April, he was back, answering many of the arguments in our March 8 article, as well as those in the letters from Mark Cathcart and Alexander Tormasov. 

Much of this interesting conversation was written about and in ClieNT Server News and it’s in their sister publication, Linuxgram, where a new letter from Shahin Khan has now surfaced.

You can find it there at http://www.linuxgram.com/article. pl?sid=02/04/02/2045229&section=newsflash (and ask for Issue 212) If Linux is important to you, we suspect you’ll want to read it.

Some of what Shahin says is indeed true – in writing about Linux on the mainframe, IBM is really writing about an environment where applications are likely to be running under the mainframe operating system VM as well as Linux.  VM provides many of the mainframe controls and features that are not available in Linux.  It is also true that this means you’ll need someone with knowledge of VM to set up the system and to tune it after any major change – Linux administrators wouldn’t know much about the VM environment.  On the other hand, VM is a very reliable operating system and the whole environment can be run, monitored, and managed remotely, so it’s very likely that this resource (VM skills), should it not be locally available, could be economically provided from a central location and/or as an outside service and, in the past, it often has been.

More to the point, as the letter from Alexander Tormasov pointed out previously, both independent software vendors like his company and major Linux vendors like IBM are enhancing the Linux environment with enterprise-style features and controls.  Sun might like Linux to remain in the Intel environment where it doesn’t threaten high-end, high margin server sales, but we suspect Linux may not have such plans.

At a recent government technology conference we attended last week, senior managers openly spoke of their desire to use Linux to cut costs, improve cross-platform interoperability, and support a more open computing environment.  Surveys of corporate IT management suggest that similar thoughts are heard in the private sector, too.  It is not as if Linux is about to replace everything else, but rather that it is becoming a viable mainstream choice. 

(back to top)