Re: [PLUG] Without OS X

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On Friday, February 7, 2003, at 07:38  AM, LeRoy Cressy wrote:
> With Linux there is no company that has control over the environment. 
> The only real control is by Linus over the kernel.  Why is IBM 
> inviting Linux programmers to port their applications to S390 and even 
> providing them login accounts on an S390.

Because far too many Linux applications only run under x86 -- they 
won't run on S390, even though "Linux" does. (Compaq did the same thing 
with the Alphas years ago, but sadly, it didn't produce any significant 
interest or results.)

As was mentioned earlier -- programmers have no idea what endian means 
nor the implications of a 64 bit OS. They have to learn someplace.

Even Sun "gave up" on the idea of Linux on SPARC -- they introduced an 
entire product line of x86 hardware because they recognized the 
problem. Sun clearly didn't do it for performance reasons, no x86 could 
outperform a SPARC, could it? Sun's decision was market driven. Linux 
on x86 is what the customers wanted, not Linux on SPARC, performance or 
not.

Nobody cares about the fact that the Kernel runs on something. I can 
run it on my StrongArm iPaq... but the applications aren't there. It's 
nice to say, "Well you can port it yourself," or "All you have to do is 
compile it." Both statements may be true, but they are Academic 
arguments. Commercial enterprises want to be able to use computers to 
do THEIR work; not to be forced to pay some geek to do Computer Science 
work instead of something meaningful to their business.

The other reason that IBM is inviting Linux programmers to port their 
applications is that IBM gets the application ported for FREE. 
DEC/Compaq had to pay their own people to do the Alpha ports for almost 
everything that runs on the Alpha (including RedHat and SuSe) -- and 
that was after Linus had already developed the kernel on the Alpha 
Maddog got him long ago.

Having a naked operating system on a piece of hardware is nice, but 
rarely, if ever, gets the job done. Applications are still the reason 
that one has a computer in a business in the first place.


T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg
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magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com

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