Database makes peace between Linux and Windows

SQL Base - one of the Big Ten in the RDBMS? Even in football the lower end teams do not carry much weight even in a Big! conference. Sybase has been releasing development copies of its ASE database for Linux for quite a time and it has been losing market share from what I have seen during most of that period. Moreover, some versions were legal as production versions, however, with no support. In some respects, Oracle has offered development copies for Linux (perhaps even earlier than Sybase) and for developers on more friendly terms.

Do not take too much comfort in what might be the last gasp for air that a company sees its future leading the world to Linux. Every little bit helps, but too many times the contribution has been much less than the words contained in the announcement. Indeed, too many times Linux has been the lever to get better pricing / consideration/ or whatever than the touted move to Linux.

I am sure that the actual penetration of Linux is higher than measured. This machine, that is a duel boot, came from IBM with W2K and appeared as such in the marketing statistics even though I informed them at the time of the purchase I planned to install Linux. Not too long ago (several months by now) I wanted to check some older email on the W2K side - it had been so long since I used it I could barely remember the password. [My passwords make no sense as typed, due to their being in code. However, I could retrieve it by figuring what the root message was.]