Re: RDi and Linux

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Tough question because as soon as I had the option I would switch most 
of my daily use to Linux because I need to become much more familiar 
with it and already use it from time to time.  But, from a productivity 
standpoint I would actually lose a little productivity with a switch to 
Linux in the short run as I moved there full time.  Right now I *want* 
to run in Linux the majority of the time but I can't because of the 
tools I need for development.

From the perspective of *need*, I'd give it a 2.  From the the 
perspective of *want*, I'd give it a 4.5.

Much talk in the posts about the ubiquity of Windows and how that pretty 
much determines what tooling we will have.  I wonder, however, if IBM 
had polled the same group about the ability to run Linux on the i, or 
run AIX on the i 5 years ago, how many hands would have gone up.  About 
the same, I'd imagine, although the audiences for tools and the audience 
for OS's would be different.  If IBM had said: How many would like to 
run Windows Server natively on i without additional hardware, how many 
hands would have been raised? Would that have pushed them forward to 
develop an architecture that natively supported Windows? Probably not.

I guess my point is I think IBM went forward with Linux/AIX on i, not 
because it was in high demand from existing users but because 
technically it was possible and trends in the market looked like those 
OS's were gaining some traction, so they "bet on the come" with 
Linux/AIX support on i.  I wish that they would do the same with their 
tooling.

Pete


Joe Pluta wrote:
> In my session at Rational, George Farr asked the audience who thought 
> that having RDi on Linux was important.  Only one or two hands went up.  
> Although this really wasn't a session on RDi, it was on RDi-SOA, and the 
> audience was more non-i people than i people, it was still a little 
> surprising to me.
>
> I then began to wonder whether my own personal anti-Microsoft bias is 
> really skewing my perception.  Personally, if I were running an IT 
> department I'd be very interested in a pure Linux network.  With the 
> exception of a couple of specific-use programs, I don't use Windows-only 
> products anymore and I'm pretty happy.  My biggest issue today is that I 
> have to use Windows for RDi.
>
> On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being very important and 1 being not 
> important at all, how would you rate the importance of having RDi 
> running on Linux?
>
> Joe
>