Mark Post wrote:
Yes, they're now trying to push Ubuntu in the server market. I have no idea just how
minuscule their "market share" is in that regard, but I imagine it's pretty
small. Most people who really want a F/LOSS server have gone with Debian. Those who are
more pragmatic use SLES or RHEL. Until someone in the Ubuntu community feels strongly
enough to put the time and effort in (and I know all too well, that is a *lot* of time
and effort), there won't be a version for the mainframe.
If there *is* someone out there, reading this, that feels that strongly, there
are a couple of options open to you for doing the build on real mainframe
hardware. It doesn't have to be all cross-compiles, or Hercules.
My understanding here is that there are more than just what you are
stating (if you allow me to be as daring to come forth with such a bold
statement :P)..
First debian is utterly lacking a full s390x (read z/Arch) userland..
Well.. They have the necessary tools to build s390x binaries, but no
such thing as a full s390x distro.. I believe that simply comes from a
lack of interest and manpower to do that..
Second (and this addresses all distros != SLES|RHEL) is the lack of ISV
support for those (and this is not a s390/s390x thing.. it's cross
platform)... Of course, this is not really a 'linux' issue per-se (more
a glibc & consort problem). But basically what is putting off a lot of
people from going for, say, a full debian system is that it's close to
impossible to run some of the midleware that most applications now need.
The ubuntu folks (read Canonical) do provide (if you read the PR)
professional grade support (never tried it though).. The only big diff
here is that ubuntu is supposedly providing the exact and same distro
out in the wild to the general public than the per-for-support one (in
contrast to novell/redhat which have 2 different deliverables) .. Of
course, "public" distros make little sense for s390x (considering the
number of people that have a z9 in their living room) so since ubuntu
seems to be heavily relying on public support for its internal support,
then it's not just a matter of compiling/porting the thing.
Now.. compiling an entire GNU/Linux system on hercules.. boy ! you
really need to have time on your hand (or a truckload of CPU
horsepower). Because otherwise, we're talking weeks !
Anyway.. that was just my €.02 (I doubt my Euro sign will get through..
So that "?" is actually a euro sign for those wondering)
--Ivan
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