Linux in the news & 64-bit

I think Linux offers a considerable advantage over Windows when it comes to running on a 64-bit base (the 64-bit versions of Windows that I have tried didn’t seem too stable). I’m not quite sure why the article said that they are leading the way, our company (of a similar size) has been running Oracle based applications on a 64-bit hardware and software base for quite some time. I guess it just fills some space in the magazine! Other mentions included Stirling university who have improved performance three-fold and lowered costs. How? Oh that’s interesting, by moving over to HP Itanium based servers running Linux; I’m not making accusations here but it’s interesting that both of these articles were written by the same author. I wonder if he also works for HP, no surely not... Last but not least, I see that Dell are now offering a desktop system with NO Windows pre-installation. This saves money for enterprises using Linux on the desktop as they would usually have to buy a PC pre-loaded with Windows and then wipe it out, which is a bit of a waste of a llicence.



As our company runs all of our core services and systems on a Linux base I find it very interesting to see how other companies are approaching it’s use. It seems even to companies who would traditionally run with Windows; Linux is offering a real alternative when it comes to high performance 64-bit processing. I’m rather surprised that people are choosing to go with the Itanium based systems, we have both Itanium and AMD Opteron 64-bit systems. Both run SUSE Enterprise server with Oracle 10g. The Opteron systems have out performed the Itanium by such large margins that the Itaniums have actually been put on the shelf as it were. The Opteron based systems were also much cheaper than the Itaniums (Truly a fraction of the price). I guess the big three providers (IBM, HP, SGI) are hoping that people don’t notice the reduced cost and increased performance of the Opteron systems so that they can continue to sell their overpriced, underperforming Itanium based hardware!



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