IBM Entices Sun, HP Customers onto Linux Mainframes

“Hrm. I only see this useful for people who are existing
customers and require mainframes for other purposes then what they
need Linux or Solaris or whatever for. That way they can get rid of
some servers and whatnot.

“Even then it’s still not a easy thing to ‘get’. So much
mainframe software licensing is based on ‘mips’ and core count that
having any excess capacity in CPU is a very bad thing financially.
With mainframes you generally want to keep the CPU as slow as
possible to reduce licensing and support costs… so if you have
lots of cycles to devote to running a Linux web server or whatever
then your probably doing something wrong.”
The LWN comments are good complements to the article–
ed.

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