Re: RDi and Linux

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