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Munich, Germany Opts for Debian Linux for 14,000 Machines

In a cheeky move that shows just how much some German techies do not like Novell's acquisition of commercial Linux distributor SUSE, the city of Munich, which has been evaluating the use of Linux and Windows for its 14,000-strong population of PCs, laptops, and servers, has decided to go completely off the beaten path and opted to use the Debian implementation of Linux rather than what was presumably the obvious choice of SUSE Linux, which is by far the dominant Linux in Germany.

In 2003, the German Ministry of the Interior signed a deal with IBM to help city, state, and federal German government agencies try to move to Linux. While European companies and governments are often not as fast at adopting new technologies as their American counterparts, Europe was a hot-bed for the Unix revolution in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and both Europe and Asia are rapidly adopting Linux. In Western Europe last year, about 15 percent of new desktops ship with Linux. In late 2003, Munich decided to replace its 14,000 Windows desktops with Linux. Microsoft hired away Karl Aigner, the account manager at SUSE who sold Munich on Linux, to try to reverse the deal, and even the personal intervention of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer could not change the mind of the Munich politicos and its IT staff. Munich is the capital city of Bavaria, where SUSE's German offices are located, and the fact that the city chose Debian, which is among the least commercialized of the name-brand Linuxes, and not SUSE is a bit stunning. To create its own variant of Linux, which it is calling LiMux (surely Munix was a better name?), the city has enlisted the aid of Gonicus, an open source consultancy based in Arnsberg, and Softcon, another consultancy based in Munich, to help with the creation and rollout of the city's desktops. Novell, IBM, EDS, and a bunch of other companies were chasing the Munich deal, but the city decided to stay local.

IBM Tweaks Red Hat Linux on Power Prices Up and Down

If you want to buy Red Hat Linux for your iSeries, pSeries, or OpenPower server, you can buy it from Red Hat, or you can buy it at a discount from IBM, which started directly distributing both Red Hat and Novell SUSE Linux last summer. However, IBM's prices just changed, and for the most part, they have gone up, although in some cases, prices have dropped.

Red Hat doesn't charge per system (regardless of the number of partitions), but per Linux instance on a server within partitions, even if there is only one partition (meaning it is in effect an SMP server). Through IBM, you can get Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3 Update 3 or Linux AS 4. IBM has also launched its own electronic technical support service in conjunction with Red Hat (and also with Novell), which lets customers can get the same one-contact with Global Services for support for Linux as they get for OS/400 and AIX. Here are the price changes for 5369-RDH, which is the product number for Red Hat products:

• 1 Year Subscription and Standard Support, 1-2 CPUs (feature 2419); was $995, now $799; down 19.7%
• 3 Year Subscription and Standard Support, 1-2 CPUs (feature 2420); was $2685, now $2157; down 19.7%
• 1 Year Subscription and No Support, 1-2 CPUs (feature 2423); was $295, now $395; up 33.9%
• 3 Year Subscription and No Support, 1-2 CPUs (feature 2424); was $795, now $1067; up 34.2%
• 1 Year Subscription and Standard Support, 1-8 CPUs (feature 2427); was $1295, now $1499; up 15.8%
• 3 Year Subscription and Standard Support, 1-8 CPUs (feature 2428); was $3495, now $4047; up 15.8%
• 1 Year Subscription and Premium Support, 1-8 CPUs (feature 2429); was $1995, now $2495; up 25%
• 3 Year Subscription and Premium Support, 1-8 CPUs (feature 2430); was $5385, now $6737; up 25%
• 1 Year Subscription and No Support, 1-8 CPUs (feature 2431); was $595, now $995; up 67%
• 3 Year Subscription and No Support, 1-8 CPUs (feature 2432); was $1605, now $2687; up 67%
• 1 Year Premium Subscription and No Support, 1-8 CPUs (feature 2433); was $795, now $1295; up 63%
• 3 Year Premium Subscription and No Support, 1-8 CPUs (feature 2434); was $2145, now $3497; up 63%

Mandriva Linux Limited Edition Is Ready for Download

Commercial Linux distributor Mandriva said that it would have its Linux Limited Edition 2005 available for download, and now it is. You can download the operating system at www.mandrivalinux.com/en/ftp.php3. Limited Edition 2005 includes the Linux 2.6.11.6 kernel and both the KDE 3.3.2 (with some backports from 3.4, including kpdf) and Gnome 2.8.3 interfaces. It also includes the Firefox 1.0.2 browser, the GNU GCC 3.4.3 compiler set, the GNU GIMP 2.2 image viewer, the CDrecord 2.0.1 CD cutter program (which supports dual DVD-CD-R players), the OpenOffice 1.1.4 office suite, and the MySQL 4.1.11 database. Limited Edition 2005 supports 32-bit X86 and 64-bit X86-64 and EM64T hardware, and like other Linuxes, Limited Edition supports 32-bit and 64-bit applications running side-by-side within the same platform.

Dell Launches Linux Server Patch Management Tool

Dell announced yesterday it is expanding its partnership with change management provider Altiris to offer integrated patch management capabilities for Linux servers and PCs.

Dell says Linux shops will benefit from the new partnership by being able to hook their Dell OpenManage 4 systems management software into the Altiris change management software, which is called the Altiris Management Suite. With Dell OpenManage 4 and Altiris Management Suite talking to each other, Windows shops will be able to update system software, operating systems, and applications from a single interface.

Altiris customers already using the company's change management software to manage the maintenance and roll-out of Linux patches and application updates also benefit by using the patch tool for automated delivery of BIOS, ROM, and firmware updates from Dell.

Altiris is a growing and successful developer of change management software for the Linux, Windows, and Unix platforms and Java middleware, with more than 11,000 customers and $166 million in revenue for the year ended December 31. In addition to the strategic relationship with Dell, the Lindon, Utah, company has a similar agreement with Hewlett-Packard.

BusinessObjects Partners with MySQL for Business Intelligence

The open source MySQL database keeps building momentum, and this week business intelligence software maker BusinessObjects announced a partnership with MySQL (the Swedish company behind the database) to embed MySQL (the database) inside the BusinessObjects XI data warehousing toolset. Specifically, BusinessObjects will embed MySQL inside versions of BusinessObjects XI running on Unix and Linux platforms to be used as the system repositior; the partnership between the two companies will also see MySQL on the official support list of database for the Crystal Reports XI reporting tool and Data Integrator, BusinessObjects' extract-transform-load (ETL) tool for data warehouses. By supporting MySQL, BusinessObjects is significantly increasing its chances of increasing its installed base from the current 30,000--which is the largest installed base in the business intelligence market, by the way.

BEA Attempts to Quantify and Qualify IT's Acceptance of Service-Oriented Architectures

So, what do you think about service-oriented architectures? Not sure? Think it sounds like a good idea for building more flexible applications, but are a little unsure about exactly what people mean when they say SOA? Join the club, because according to a new survey of 1,000 C-level managers, IT managers, and programmers by middleware software maker BEA Systems, you are in good company.

BEA said that about the same number of C-level executives spent time on the survey as IT managers, which the company believes is indicative of the fact that C-level execs understand that SOA is an important evolution in application development that can make their companies more resilient by making their IT systems and applications more flexible. About 44 percent of those surveyed (across all titles) said that they were familiar with SOA, and on a scale of 1 to 4, where 1 meant you have the basic concepts of SOA and 4 meant you were already an advanced adherent to this approach of developing software as a mesh of services, not as monolithic application, the average response was 1.76. Some 90 percent of those taking the survey understood that SOA was about improving the level of service that IT delivers to end users, customers, and partners and that done properly it could result in lower costs, the re-use of application components, and better integration of applications.

Interestingly, about 29 percent of those who did the survey identified themselves as SOA architects, which is a hybrid of a business analyst, an application developer, and a system analyst.

Winchester Enhances SATA, Fibre Channel Disk Arrays

Storage vendor Winchester Systems has announced a new, top-end Serial ATA disk array that pretty much puts to rest the idea that SATA cannot scale. The new SA-700 array can lash together a stunning 800 of the 400 GB SATA disk drives, scaling up to 320 TB in a single subsystem; with future 500 GB SATA drives, it scales up to 400 TB. All of these disks spin at 7200 RPM, but if you want to move down to 74 GB SATA drives, you can get 10K RPM drives to boost performance. These arrays can be lashed together to create a network of arrays--all managed from a single console--that spans 6.4 PB (that's petabytes, or thousands of TB). Such large arrays are necessary for archiving dense data sets, like video and satellite imagery. The SA-700 has two RAID controllers, and it is supported on Unix, Linux, and Windows platforms.

Winchester has also announced a new Fibre Channel array, the FX-400e, which has a single or twin (single plus redundant for hot spare) RAID controller, which can support up to four concurrent hosts, and which scales to 44 TB. The FX-400e is also supported on Unix, Linux, and Windows platforms.