“When a small team of IBM programmers in Boeblingen, Germany
completed a port of Linux on the IBM S/390 mainframe in December
1999, it ushered in a new era in the short history of Linux.
Now Linux runs on everything from handheld PalmPilots to large
mainframes.”
“At Linux World in early February 2000, IBM demonstrated Linux
running on the S/390 by piping audio-streamed MP3s across the
conference hall. IBM won’t say when–or even if–it will officially
release the product, but the company is making the code available
for download. And the notion of running Linux on an IBM mainframe
has piqued the interest of at least some IBM customers. As of early
March 2000, the code had been downloaded 600 times, according to
IBM. And a Linux on S/390 e-mail listserv has more than 550
members.”
“So far, many of the mainframe users appear to be just kicking
the tires. The Toronto Transit Commission, for example, is
evaluating Linux for a number of uses. As part of the evaluation,
Peter Webb, a technical support analyst at the Transit Commission,
has been running Linux on the organization’s IBM mainframe, a
Multiprise 2003-225, since January 2000. Webb hopes his test system
will encourage the Transit Commission to consider the mainframe as
a platform for Linux.”