[Info-vax] CentOS has been effectively killed for production use

[David Wade]

On 09/12/2020 18:13, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/9/20 11:14 AM, David Wade wrote:
>> On 09/12/2020 14:33, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 12/9/2020 8:34 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>> IBM (who now own Red Hat) has just effectively killed CentOS for
>>>> production use by turning it into an unstable rolling distribution:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/09/centos_red_hat/
>>>>
>>>> Fortunately, at least in the Unix/Linux world, there are always
>>>> other options.
>>>
>>> Supposedly there are about 1000 Linux distros.
>>>
>>> Arne
>>>
>> But if you want something that runs on IBMs "Z" hardware there are not 
>> so many and CENTOS was one of the cheaper ways of doing it.
>>
> What, exactly, would be the advantage of running Linux on "Z" hardware?
> "Z" hardware's advantage is that it can run an IBM OS something that I
> don't believe can be run on any other hardware platform.  While Linux
> can be run on damn near everything.
> 
> bill

Bill,

IBM mainframes are big. If you need one to run zOS (formerly MVS) or zVM 
(formerly VM/ESA, VM/XA etc) then they sell you a box that is over 
sized, but even so you only get to use part of it. You pay with the soul 
of your first born, or some other outrageous fee, but IBM know that you 
have a pile of CICS code written in Assembler or Cobol and no one who 
understands the business logic so you are pretty much stuck with a 
mainframe.

You are probably using it to run a big bank, airline reservation system 
or Air Traffic control. Moving from these hits into those risk analysis 
holes you mentioned before.

However now you have the big animal IBM will let you use the spare 
capacity to run Linux. They charge much less for this capacity. Its 
called "Integrated Facility for Linux"

https://www.ibm.com/uk-en/products/integrated-facility-for-linux

Appart from being marked as IFLs the Linux dedicated CPUs are no 
different from normal z CPUs, well except IBM charge much less for them,

This strategy stops people from switching to another platform and 
discovering that if you take care it will run as reliably as "z".

Its good old fashioned lock-in but the Mainframe market is small enough 
that the "anti trust" brigade won't interfere....

https://www.theregister.com/2011/08/03/ibm_eu_mainframe_complaints_dropped/

I hope this explains why users run Linux on Z.

Dave