[ Linux Today reader Hans
Schou writes: ]
“Friday 8 october 1999 there was a story in the Danish
Computerworld about IBM had ported Linux to the S/390
mainframe.
For some people this would not be amazing, as there was a
posting to the Linux Kernel list back in march 1999, where a guy
asked about DMA buffers and address space. The posting came from
3dlabs.com and the rumor began that IBM was porting Linux to
mainframe.
I called IBM today and they confirmed that the development was
going on, but they did not had any press releases. While I had the
guy on the phone I asked to get a speaker for our local LUG. That
was not impossible but they did not have anyone in Europe who could
do the speach, so they had to “fly ’em in”.
The story tells a lot about how excited IBM are about Linux. The
I/O-subsystems should come in a faster and more simple design and
one of the products which will come first is a Gigabit LAN
controler. S/390 will come in a more light version which should be
a real UNIX-killer. Linux and OS/390 would run on the same time on
the micro-kernel architecture. According to IBM Linux on S/390 will
the fastest Linux ever.
S390-Linux is a clean Linux distribution.
Linus Torvalds has been contacted and is positive about the
project and would discuss the micro-kernel model on the developer
list.”
The article in Danish may be found
here.