Re: WDSC for Linux...

It sounds that RedHat tried to keep resources on the "Server side" instead
of desktop.  I tried the Suse (Novell) Linux.  Pretty good.  However, the
problem of Linux is that, as Scott mentioned, Linux is a kernel only.  The
distributor packages the application...  Thus, every linux has different
setup utilities.... nightmare...

Kevin



-----Original Message-----
From: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Scott Klement
Sent: November 1, 2006 3:02 PM
To: Websphere Development Studio Client for iSeries
Subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] WDSC for Linux...

Here's an alternative: IBM could just choose one distro to support - say
Red Hat.

Hmmm... I'd say RedHet is a poor choice.  Many years ago, it was popular. 
Then RedHat split into an open source version called Fedora and a 
commercial (for pay)  version that's still called RedHat.  Now you don't 
see too many people running RedHat anymore.  A lot switched to Fedora, and 
I suspect a lot of Fedora users have switched to Ubuntu, since ease of use 
was the reason they used RedHat to begin with, and Ubuntu surpassed them 
in that respect.

However, that's just my impression -- I haven't done any actual research 
to come to that conclusion.

If IBM wants to pick just one to support, I'd think Ubuntu would be the 
first choice.  Or maybe Debian.

But that would only help with i386 versions of Linux (and not Alpha or 
PowerPC, etc). And it wouldn't provide any solutions for MacOS or FreeBSD 
users... or various other unix-like operating systems.

Even better, if IBM could manage to confine dependancies to libraries
included in the Linux Standard Base, they would be able to support myriad
distros in one shot.  I guess FreeBSD might get left out in this case -
does BSD have something like the LSB?

FreeBSD is an entire distribution, it's not just a kernel like Linux is. 
The base tools that come with the operating system are developed, tested 
and supported by the same team of people who develop the kernel, and it's 
all distributed as an operating system. Consequently, there's no LSB. If 
you say you support FreeBSD, then it's implied that you're using the tools 
that come with it. :)

Linux on the other hand is just a kernel developed by a team of people. 
Then a separate team (Fedora, Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat, etc) 
combines it with the basic tools to make a dsitribution.  It's a different 
paradigm.

The other BSDs (OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, MacOS, etc) have a separate 
team of people, maintaining a separate kernel and separate userland tools. 
This is very different from Linux where the same kernel is used in 
different distros. Although the other BSDs may have used code from FreeBSD 
or one of it's ancestors when they first started out, they're no using the 
same codebase.  Though, they do share ideas between them...  for example, 
if there's a new network card released, and NetBSD has drivers for it, 
then the FreeBSD guys might take their code (possibly with modifications) 
and include it in FreeBSD -- one the advantages of open source!

Anyway...  they're all very similar.  In almost all cases, a simple 
re-compile of the Linux sources will work on FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, 
etc.  There might be a little difference here or there that you have to 
account for, but they're few and far between.  If IBM provided the source 
for WDSC and made it work on Linux, I'd happily make and maintain my own 
patches to let it work on FreeBSD.

But this is all moot since I doubt they'd ever provide the source for 
WDSC.  That leaves me with a Linux binary and running it under some sort 
of emulation.