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from the bringing-the-mainframe-into-the-21st-century dept.
IBM Introduces Two Open-Source-Only Mainframes
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: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @05:09PM
Mainframes are really architecturally very sophisticated, and after all these years pretty good.
You can view pretty much every cluster of crud as a (bad) attempt to reinvent the mainframe. The only true competitors which spring to mind are VMS/VAX clusters, and they're pretty much gone.
The computer industry will move ahead once we realise that decades of improvements in hardware and miniaturisation and packaging will enable us to build modular mainframes which can live in a shoebox.
Until then, we're at the mercy of the philosophy of enforced adequacy (not even mediocrity) which Bill Gates and Steve Jobs left us.