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Topic: Software

Red Hat and SUSE join IBM in new Linux system, Canonical opts out

Summary: While Red Hat and SUSE are throwing their support behind IBM's new Linux POWER servers, Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company, has opted to sit this one out.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

By for Linux and Open Source |

Red Hat & SUSE's Linux will be on IBM s new POWER servers, but not Ubuntu.

Over a year in the making IBM has just unveiled its new IBM PowerLinux Systems and Solutions. This new series of Linux-specific POWER7 processor-based hardware comes with a choice of either Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server . It's designed for analyzing Big Data, managing industry-specific applications and delivering open source infrastructure services for the mid market and above. Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company, opted out of offering its Linux on this new server family though.

According to IBM, “The new PowerLinux Solutions and supporting systems are designed to provide customers with lower deployment time and costs, and greater performance, dependability and workload density than competitive x86 platforms at similar price points.” This is meant to complement IBM AIX Unix and IBM i application requirements on Power Systems.

These are: IBM Power Linux Big Data Analytics Solution; IBM PowerLinux Industry Application Solution, which is for business applications like SAP; and IBM PowerLinux Open Source Infrastructure Services Solution. The last provides virtual machine (VM) machine program PowerVM for PowerLinux virtualization technology. This is designed to let companies deliver edge services such as Web servers, email and social business collaboration more cost effectively by using PowerLinux Systems than can be done with commodity x86 servers.

So where was Canonical? The Isle of Man-based company has been working with IBM on delivering Ubuntu Linux for the IBM’s System p mini-computers. But, the partnership came to nothing.

Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical's founder, told me, “We don't support POWER because, by mutual agreement with IBM, there's little to no overlap between the POWER user base and Ubuntu. People are choosing Ubuntu for farms of commodity servers, and POWER has been adopted for highly-specialized mission-critical roles. If IBM ever wanted to reach either the cloud or bulk computing market with POWER, then I expect the stats above would be relevant for their choice of OS, because they reflect the real choices of those markets.”

Be that as it may, IBM, Red Hat, and SUSE still believe that middle to high-end servers can still deliver the enterprise goods.

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Topics: Software, Hardware, IBM, Linux, Open Source, Operating Systems, Servers

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14 comments
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  • Red Hat and SUSE join IBM in new Linux system

    Kudos to Red Hat, SUSE and IBM.
    daikon
    Reply Vote

  • Missed the point in the last line

    These are priced to go against the Xeon x86 blades hence why linux and no AIX, at this price point I can see AIX shops being a bit PO'd at power boxs being given out seemingly on the cheap without them being able to utilise.

    Even so these are well priced and should be extremely competitve
    the.nameless.drifter
    Reply Vote

  • Sounds more like bad blood in the back room

    Just saying, the excuses look lame to me.
    Cynical99
    Reply Vote

    • Funny, it sounds like Shuttleworth understands his market

      Shuttleworth is positioning his distribution to specific market segments. Extending resources to a niche product distracts away from his organization' core mission. Remember the GMC EM-50? That was the Urban Assault Vehicle in Stripes. The EM-50 distracted GMC by extending resources to a product it was never going to seriously compete against more entrenched RV players.
      Your Non Advocate
      Reply Vote

      • True, but ...

        ... GMC's motorhome was a highly disruptive force in the RV world. Until then -- and for several years afterward -- RVs had been big, ugly boxes on crude chassis and with nice, but hardly spectacular interiors.

        Though GMC only made a half-hearted run at the market, it did it with style: a sleek (for an RV) body, low-slung chassis and front wheel drive that allowed for a low floor height and lower center of gravity for much better handling, and the interior was practically opulent. It even has air suspension (vs a Winnie's dump-truck-like leaf springs) for a plush ride. Many of these features are now standard on modern motorhomes, today.

        GMC's problem (at the time) wasn't that the Motorhome line siphoned off resources -- in the early/mid-70s GM still commanded roughly half the car market and had engineers to burn -- it's problem was lack of vision, direction and focus.

        Canonical seems to have the opposite situation: it's not big enough to jump on every project that comes along, so it has to focus on the ones that make the most sense, strategically.

        Sorta sounds (to me) like that's what they're doing.

        BTW, GMC's motorhome still has quite a following -- both the small and large versions are highly prized by RV'ers. Canonical should be so lucky 40 years from now.
        imalugnut
        Reply Vote

  • Canonical Would Need a Real Incentive to Resurrect Power

    Canonical is trying to consolidate its resources lately. They would need a good incentive to resurrect support for the Power architecture which they dropped altogether a few years back. Of course, last I knew, there was an unofficial PowerPC version of Ubuntu still in existence, which might support Power with very little tweaking.
    CFWhitman
    Reply Vote

    • LINUX

      Many organizations staff other jobs related to system administration. In a larger company, these may all be separate positions within a computer support or information services department. In a smaller group they may be shared by a few sysadmins, or even a single person. Thanks.
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      jaffa55
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  • test.

    test.
    olivia.raffa
    Reply Vote

  • Canonical doesn't care

    ...they'll have 20 million (or pick some number) desktops by the end of the year.
    james.vandamme
    Reply Vote

  • There is a swARM comin!

    It's is known that Canonical has been very active with Linaro and the ARM bunch in general. As ARM chips integrate more powerful GPUs and with technologies like OpenCL, big.LITTLE and CARMA on the anvil ARM will be able to scale up from low power entry level servers to high performance blades. With Microsoft jumping onto the ARM bandwagon, NVIDIA desigining 64-bit ARM solutions, DELL "curious" about "possibilities", I reckon Canonical is making a wise decision here by being cautious. Justs my 2 cents folks :)
    el_tirador
    Reply Vote

    • typo alert

      *just....lol
      el_tirador
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