IBM is introducing two mainframe servers that run only on the open-source Linux operating system.
The new hardware will make it easier to run technology like the MongoDB database and the open-source software Spark. Presently more than a third of IBM's mainframe clients are running the Linux operating system. IBM also said it will release mainframe code to the public and join a new cohort of less than a dozen academic, government and corporate entities in what's called the Open Mainframe Project, an open source endeavor devoted to helping companies using mainframe computers.
IBM is sweetening the pot by contributing 250,000 lines of mainframe code to the Linux community, hoping to attract a new generation of developers to their platform. To help coax new users, IBM will be offering free access to the LinuxOne cloud, a mainframe simulation tool it developed for creating, testing and piloting Linux mainframe applications.
Some of the specs for the machines can be found in this article from Reuters, including a partnership with Canonical Ltd. to distribute Ubuntu on the LinuxONE and zSeries systems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @05:47PM
"It's essentially an operating system for defining virtual machines, but was done back in the 1930s or something and is hideously terrible to use. Imagine the most unproductive environment you've ever seen and double it."
It is a system designed for all that nasty back of house business stuff that actually runs the world, like inventory, payroll, bank transaction processing, airline reservations
and isn't pretty, but is necessary for the world to work.