[Beowulf] Rackable / SGI

[John Hearns]

2009/4/3 Robert G. Brown <rgb at phy.duke.edu>:

> > There are similar questions associated with IBM.  Sun provides support
> for some major tools used in Linux these days, notably open office but
> also SGE.


Don't forget MySQL
Who knows what the result of the catfight between DB2 and MySQL would be


 > Finally I don't think of Rackable as being a software company at all,
> although SGI has always had SOME software component to their offerings,
> if only glueware or graphicware for their hardware.


Wellllll.... I count XFS, CXFS, DMF as software.
Think of Performance Copilot, an MPI stack, Tempo cluster management suite also.
(Did I mention I've been on a few SGI training courses?)
Plus their new VUE visual computing software - which was very attractive for me.


 Again I could see
> them simply glomming onto SGI's server business and more or less purging
> their developers and eliminating all participation in non-revenue
> generating development.

Which would be tragic.

I agree with what you say in the main though - we should be very aware
of what could come
out of these mergers.

Maybe I'm going too far in saying this, but what would a Linux
landscape consisting of
a very few commercially supported Linuxes plus the one alternative of
Debian (plus Ubuntu)
be like?