> This question is causing alot of confusion for us. We are > getting ready > to > put up SuSe linux, and also want to put up a couple of relevent > applications > to actually do a pilot test. When an vendor application says it is > certified > to run on SuSe(or Redhat) distribution, does that mean it is > certified on > run > on that distribution regardless of the underlying hardware platform?
No. Unless the vendor explicitly says "X on System/390 or zSeries", you can probably bet that it's for Intel only. > However, we would also like to do INFORMIX, and there is a version for > Linux(but not listed as z/Series ready). Will this run on > Linux on the > mainframe? Or is this another black-eye for the mainframe(like Unix > System Services was from a pure UNIX perspective) where > it's not quite ready for prime-time, and is just different enough that > there > are not enough apps available yet. Vendors go where the volume is. There's more Intel boxes out there, so those go first. Usually, you need to ask/pester/browbeat the vendor to do a 390 release, but once they've done the Intel version, it's usually a much less difficult task to convince them to do an 390 release. > Granted, I'm not up to speed yet, but I thought a > distribution of Linux > was > just that regardless of the platform, and the the application > would run > anywhere that distribution ran(i.e. binary compatible). Within a processor architecture, that's usually true (modulo some stupidity about where certain files are located, which is getting better). Across architectures, well... that's a different story. It's more an issue of where the vendors are prepared to handle support. Intel PC weenies are a dime a dozen; S390 literate people are more expensive and a lot rarer, which raises the support cost, and most vendors don't release a product they can't support. It's Economics 101 -- most bang for the porting buck first, other stuff comes later. Note that even IBM can't muscle their software divisions to getting stuff to 390 Linux w/o making the support dollar case (cf the long delays for TSM, Domino, etc). -- db
