>>> On Tue, Aug 28, 2007 at 11:36 AM, in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED] >, "Young, Mike" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello Linux-390 Group, > > What patching solutions are available for Linux-390? Does IBM have a > separate patching solution and repository? Does it use up2date, yum, or...? > How often are patches released?
It sounds as though you believe IBM has a Linux distribution of its own. It does not. After IBM decided to pursue Linux as a business opportunity, it partnered with a number of different Linux distribution providers to create those distributions for all of IBM's hardware lines: System x, System p, and System z. Since then, only two of those distribution partners are still around and supporting all those product lines: Novell/SUSE, and Red Hat. A number of non-commercial distributions also have mainframe versions: Debian/390 Slack/390 CentOS Fedora (sometimes, not always) Gentoo (some time ago, not at the moment, I believe) In essence, the Linux developers that work for IBM act as any other Linux developer. They submit code to Andrew Morton and Linus Torvalds, and if things go well, that code gets integrated into the official kernel source. Linux distribution providers such as Novell and Red Hat take that code and create new distributions from it. Since mainframe Linux is still evolving very rapidly (even compared to Linux as whole), the IBM developers will also post their mainframe-specific patches to the kernel on IBM's developerWorks site. From time to time, Novell will take those patches and integrate them into their currently supported releases as updated kernel RPMs. Red Hat waits until the code has been accepted by Andrew and Linus before doing so (the last I heard). You can, if you're a masochist such as I am, build your own Linux kernel by taking the source from kernel.org and integrating the as-yet not accepted patches from developerWorks. Be aware that's not a lot of fun for most people, who just want something that works. Mark Post ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
