Sheesh!

Sheesh. You guys really do read these issues. For evidence, I need look no further than my inbox:

IBM’s zSeries servers (a.k.a. mainframes) and iSeries servers (a.k.a.
AS/400s) used to run only proprietary operating systems. The mainframes
used to run MVS (later renamed OS/390, and now known as z/OS), VM (now
known as zVM), or VSE. The AS/400s used to run OS/400. When Linux was
first ported to these platforms, it was being run in a logical partition
(a.k.a. LPAR - a technology pioneered by IBM for sharing a computer’s
resources between several concurrent OSs), but only in a secondary LPAR -
never in the primary one. It was also available as a guest OS under VM (VM
provides a software based parallel of logical partitioning, and existed
long before LPAR technology. A similar technique is used by the much more
recent VMWare for PCs). In fact the idea of consolidating Internet servers
with multiple Linux images on mainframes uses VM as the host OS, because
LPAR technology can’t scale to more than a few OS images (it was reported
that Telia is running 1500(!) Linux images on one mainframe to provide Web
hosting services).

In other words, my bad. I understood that the IBM servers, now available as dedicated Linux servers, were originally offered with a Win2k option. I realize now, though, that they’re mainframes - a long ways from the Win2k environment. Doh. I’m glad we cleared that up.

I read an interesting article on Ximian this morning - interesting in a bit of an unsettling way, that is. Ximian appears to be moving from an open-source licensing model based on the GNU General Public License to a model that will allow some of its source code to be used in closed-source projects. You’ll remember that Ximian is the very user-friendly and hopped-up Gnome desktop environment. They’ve made great strides toward increased user-friendliness on the desktop, especially with Evolution, the Outlook Express knock off for Linux. What I find a bit unsettling about this is that, according to the powers that be at Ximian, the change is part of an ongoing partnership with HP and Intel to counter the Microsoft .Net strategy. It makes me wonder if a real threat to open-source lies within the industry itself rather than without. In other words, is this a sign of a willingness to give away the core philosophy of Linux for the sake of competing? I hope not.

The blog has slid a bit the past few days. I’ve received some very encouraging comments by email on the overall look and feel, as well as the choice of content. I’ve even received a note or two questioning the point of the whole deal. Good question and it’s hard to answer. I guess you just have to follow along for a bit and reach some understanding of your own. It’s kind of like art, right?

You knew it was coming - another reminder to add your shell script to the ever-increasing list of cool scripts to be featured in next weeks shell scripting series. It couldn’t possibly be easier to submit it. Send it. I’ll publish it. And, we’ll all learn. That, my friends, is the essence of Penguin Shell.

Tony
Steidler-Dennison