William H. Magill on Fri, 7 Feb 2003 10:29:06 -0500


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Re: [PLUG] Without OS X


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 # Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg # PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a magill@mcgillsociety.org magill@acm.org magill@mac.com

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