Re: IBM 390

[Jor-el <jorel@ibm.net>]

Sid,

	I think the question should be : is there a port of Linux to the
S/390? The answer is maybe. A couple of months ago (or maybe more), there
was a post to one of the comp.os.linux.* newsgroups (I think maybe it was
c.o.l.d.s) where a guy had announced the beginning of a port to a S/360 or
S/370 machine that he had in his posession. You would have to search
dejanews to find him, and learn from him what the status of his project
is. Bear in mind, that the hardware of the S/390 is a lot more advanced
than the S/370 - so, getting your S/390 system to give the same level of
productivity with linux on it as the OS/390 delivered is something that is
not going to happen soon (if at all).

	Note, that the S/390 is not the best of architectures to fool
around with Linux. The Open-edition version of many Unix utilities, are
IMHO brain-dead. The current C/C++ compiler from IBM that runs on OS/390
differs from C/C++ compilers on Unix platforms in that function calls on
the Unix C/C++ compilers are much cheaper than with the OS/390 compiler. I
am not sure if this is a problem with the machine hardware architecture,
or a problem with the OS architecture (I would think the latter), but if
it is the former, you are essentially dead. Most applications written for
Linux are based on C/C++ code.

	In short, while you may have long-term benefits to keeping the
machine around, I dont see any short term benefits.

Regards,
Jor-el 

On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, Sid Sorenson wrote:

> The company I am working for has an ES9000 9121 Model 742 running the
> 390 instruction set comming off of lease 4th quarter of this year. The
> buyout is around $1.00 so my boss just asked me if Linux runs on the
> machine. OS390 is very expensive, so we probably won't be able to
> justify running it on the box after 3rd or 4th quarter this year.
> 
> I have 2 questions. Is there or is there going to be a Debian port that
> will run on this archetecture??
> 
> Assuming that the answer to that question is no, is there anyone out
> there willing to help port Debian to it???
> 
> 
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