“IBM has announced the availability of Linux running natively on
its S/390 mainframes, although general availability won’t be until
the autumn. SuSE and TurboLinux are acting as distributors and
first call of support for potential users.”
“Linux can either takes advantage of the mainframe’s logical
partitions to run natively, or as a VM/ESA guest operating system
on G3 390s and later. IBM added similar capabilities to its AS/400
earlier this year. An implementation of IBM’s Java 2 will follow in
June, says IBM, and Big Blue has promised to eventually port
WebSphere and Tivoli hooks to the platform too.”
“It’s not the first mainframe Unix: Amdahl’s continues to
update its venerable System V R4 port, UTS. But the two Linux ports
– one inside, and one outside IBM – have progressed remarkably
quickly.“