> less software costs (one copy per engine vs one copy each for each boxes) then > most other platforms.
software costs lower. How many copies of Red Hat PC boxed set can you buy for a VM license ;) > 4. Linux isn't ready for prime time. Jury is still out on that. Jiffies > patch is available to reduce overhead. We have a work around for the Linux > memory management (we need a switch in Linux to turn off its caching) and we > have some sections that can use VM's shared segments. Just look at this list > for all the fixes and bypasses that seem to come out weekly. I'm not sure if > the I/O performance problem still is around, or that it has been addressed. RH shipped 2.4.9-ac based trees where the memory mangement is sane (it doesnt know about the business with VM and caching obviously). SuSE use a different but apparently effective set of changed Andrea did. The base tree is getting there. Fixing the business of making underlying caching get done by VM will I suspect take a bit more effort. > PC stuff, but I sure want a MSHP, VMSES/E or SMP to do this. I wonder what the > Auditors think about this type of "shoot from the hip" maintenance? This comes up a fair bit actually. In most production environments you don't run every random new piece of software or Linus released kernel. You run stuff your vendor will put their name against and say "this is fit to use". A lot of end users want to know that the explosion in all direction end of free software is buffered entirely from them by the vendor. > expectations. If they think everything is great with Linux and it doesn't pan > out, you tarnished Linux in that shop. Definitely. The "Linux is the one true OS" zealots frequently do more harm than a high flying visit from MS corporate sales drones
