[wellylug] Ok, that was dumb of me, but I do have a question...

[michael at diaspora.gen.nz]

Ewen McNeill writes:
>I also know people at
>Datacom, etc, who are paid (in part) to support Linux systems (not sure
>if Datacom are doing any Linux-based development at present).

Sticking up my hand as one of the people at Datacom that Ewen knows,
there is increasing penetration of Linux into the "commercial" space.
Some comments (I can't give names of customers, for commercial reasons,
I'm afraid):

-- Linux is often used for development systems, as a cost saving measure
(saving cost in the hardware, rather than the OS) before transfer to
Solaris for production.  The developers push Linux harder than the
sysadmin types, in general.

-- Linux is used for web servers, and application servers, more than
it is used for database servers; people in general are still a little
nervous about using Oracle (in particular) on Linux, although in some
of our customers there is a push from the business end to use Linux for
such things.

-- In my experience, support is much much much better from any of
the commercial Unix vendors than it is from the "PC" vendors; "Linux"
in my world means in practice PC hardware, rather than Linux-on-Alpha
or something like that.  This can (and does) limit penetration; as the
vendors (I'm thinking of HP in particular) come up to speed with Linux
a little more, we'll start to see more use, I think.

-- If you're talking about distributions, Redhat is the most common
distro.  This isn't because people particularly like Redhat, per se,
but because packaged apps (Oracle, again) are usually certified, and
sometimes only certified, with Redhat.  Redhat functions as a least
common denominator.

Obviously, Datacom don't pay me to say any of this stuff, and I don't
claim they do, either.
    -- michael.