[clug] ACM Technews Snippet: Linux Grows Up

[Matthew Hawkins]

Steve Jenkin said:
> Linux's suitability for the enterprise is no longer in question, and

It ever was?  Oh yes, of course, FUD.  I'd forgotten all about FUD -
having initially treated it with the respect it deserved.

> companies need to begin seriously considering how they can best utilize
> the technology.

Hmm, that's so last millennium.  Anyone only now beginning to seriously
consider Linux is obviously madly rowing a dinghy, possibly with
underlings bailing madly, with a lookout searching for the main ship which
left the shore long ago.

> 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,

*blinks* SCO's SMP support is now better than Linux'?  There's some
conspiracy going on here...

> compared to the 32-way capability on the way in the Linux 2.6 kernel.

I've seen boot logs of 2.4 running on systems with more processors than
this (forget whether it was UltraSPARC or something else).  And obviously,
they're not going near Beowulf because its no sense letting the facts
spoil a good story ;)

> The Linux market has also matured so that the number of major players
> involved has boiled down to Red Hat and Suse Linux.

Just ask them ;)

We'll conveniently ignore Debian.  And Mandrake.  And Gentoo.  And
Smoothwall.  And LFS.  And LBT.  And...

> Illuminata President

...AHA!  I knew there was a conspiracy somewhere!

> Jonathan Eunice says the Suse distribution is more technically oriented
> while Red Hat's Linux caters more to business needs.

Strange, since anyone who actually has run these knows that Redhat caters
more to converted MS Windows end users or masochists, and SuSE to
disgruntled Redhat users who actually need a legacy RPM-based system that
works.

People who need work done run Debian, script kiddies run Mandrake, strange
people run Gentoo, almost everyone runs Smoothwall & keeps a LBT handy,
... ;-)
(hey, if the article can be opinionated, so can I)

> Hewlett-Packard Linux
> strategist Mike Balma says Linux will likely take over the Web and
> high-performance computing spaces

Ooooh!  Somebody found netcraft and spec.org and thought that the presence
of Linux systems there was something new this year!
ObUnderpantsGnomes:

1. read stuff about Linux
2. ??? (write article??)
3. profit

> , and continue to grow in network infrastructure, [...]

blah blah blah blah

No wonder some managers still have problems if they have to wade through
this cruft, with staff like me able to contradict the presented
information.

-- 
Matt