NYSE places buy on Linux, hold on Unix, Dec 14, 2007

The New York Stock Exchange is investing heavily in x86-based Linux systems and blade servers as it builds out the NYSE Hybrid Market trading system that it launched last year. Flexibility and lower cost are among the goals. But one of the things that NYSE Euronext CIO Steve Rubinow says he most wants from the new computing architecture is technology independence.

In Gartner Inc.’s forecast for the server operating systems market, there’s nothing listed under the category of emerging products. And although the market is by no means static, the pace of change inside many corporate data centers is slow.

Hewlett-Packard's decision last month to sell desktop PCs with Linux installed on them in Australia is giving hope to Linux advocates at the Encompass HP user group that a similar system may be on its way in the US.

The applause that greeted Sun Microsystems officials last week when they said the company will offer Java to the open-source community turned to concern as some users fretted over whether the programming language will split into multiple versions.

There is lot of open-source Linux out there under GPL [General Public License], etc., and that also seems to be a very interesting and successful model. I do want to make sure that there is no issue or question about Sun's intent when we go and do this.

A US Army supercomputing centre with a legacy that dates back to the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), which launched in 1946, is moving to Linux-based clusters. The move will more than double its computing capability.

A U.S. Army supercomputing center with a legacy that dates to the first large computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) launched in 1946, is moving to Linux-based clusters in a major hardware purchase that will more than double its computing capability.

Sun's release of Solaris as open-source software is an effort to expand the number of Solaris users and counter Linux and Windows growth in the data center.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange credits its migration to commodity Intel-based servers and Linux with cutting costs and shaving 100 milliseconds off the time required to complete a trade.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is moving to Intel-based servers running Linux

IBM today laid out a new road map for its mainframe computing platform, which over the next year will include adoption of the Common Information Model (CIM) standard allowing different systems to exchange information.

For years, Sun Microsystems ignored Linux or dismissed it as just another Unix variant. But company officials are now talking bluntly about their failure to recognize the corporate IT push to low-cost commodity systems, which Linux has helped foster.

Sun "dropped the ball" while customers rushed to Linux/Intel computing, said John Loiacono, executive vice president of Sun's software group. But with its Solaris 10 upgrade due by year's end, Sun is hoping to change that perception by adding a list of new features and adopting an open-source model that's as good as or better than the models used for Apache, Mozilla Linux and others, Loiacono said.