I am fascinated at the speed that Linux seems to be challenging NT and how quickly it has shaken the UNIX community. Dell announces that they can now preload Linux for you. Any "extras" they load have guaranteed drivers. They also supply a browser as well so its free software for the cost of a intenet connection?
I have been monitoring the ESRI discussion groups and they too have problems (way more than you might expect). Mostly there is a thread that some times gets through that ESRI is really having problems with users looking to move off SUNs and on to some of the hot rod Intel platforms with Linux.
Also there is rumor that GRASS will soon port to the Linux Freeware movement.
Hmmmm..... The trinity of SUN - ESRI - Oracle seems to be braking down. I guess Oracle has never really been a willing partner for anyones hardware. Now SUN faces the future of a better server in Linux for its JAVA. Maybe Scott let loose the Jini that will consume them all?
MidNight Mapper
Recently seen over the ESRI wire -
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Been running RedHat w/ Oracle 8.03 on your Poweredge DUAL CPUS w/ DVD drives, DLT, and 1G memory and your funky NIC card since Christmas. Had to recompile/tweak the NIC driver and now it runs at 100.
Oracle on Linux on the PowerEdge absolutely screams. For 20K you can get a server that puts $200K SUN and HP systems to shame. Having the source means you can fix the problem right away.
Ordered another with NT last week as a development file server. Before this year is out, we'll probably get 4-8 more but with the FDDI I/O and 2 TB of drives.
NT is as buggy as a cow carcass in a wet, hot August. If you guys do well
with Linux/GRASS, I'll push for it as the production solution and then its good
by ESRI !
