[clug] ACM Technews Snippet: Linux Grows Up

[Steve Jenkin]

Hope this is interesting.

http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1110m.html#item12
Original: http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3103241

Linux's suitability for the enterprise is no longer in question, and
companies need to begin seriously considering how they can best utilize
the technology. Despite its pervasiveness, Linux does not meet every
need but performs well under certain conditions: Unix still scales up
much farther than does Linux, offering scalability up to 256 processors,
compared to the 32-way capability on the way in the Linux 2.6 kernel.
The Linux market has also matured so that the number of major players
involved has boiled down to Red Hat and Suse Linux. Illuminata President
Jonathan Eunice says the Suse distribution is more technically oriented
while Red Hat's Linux caters more to business needs. Linux has done
particularly well among financial services firms, which like the
modularity and security advantages that provides. Hewlett-Packard Linux
strategist Mike Balma says Linux will likely take over the Web and
high-performance computing spaces, and continue to grow in network
infrastructure, utility computing, and technical areas as well; however,
Unix's scalability and middleware support make it the best choice for
robust databases and application servers. Balma says most enterprises
make the switch to Linux along with their hardware platform, since one
of the main advantages of Linux is in hardware savings. Organizations
that switch from Windows to Linux without switching their hardware do so
because of security concerns, he says. As the open-source system
matures, standardization efforts are picking up: The Free Standards
Group's Linux Standard Base certified 19 products for the 1.3 version in
order to bridge the gap between developers and the needs of the
industry. Although Balma does not think Linux is ready for all desktop
users, he says it is sufficient in certain cases.


-- 
Steve Jenkin, Unix Sys Admin
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA