LinuxWorld brings flurry of product releases
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This week's LinuxWorld Conference and Expo attracted the attention of some of the largest IT vendors.
Although Linux and the open-source movement may largely be the work of dedicated volunteers, this week's LinuxWorld Conference and Expo attracted the attention of some of the largest IT vendors. Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., Oracle Corp. and Unisys Corp. were among the heavy hitters making announcements at the Boston show. Among the highlights:
- Red Hat Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., unveiled Version 4 of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system. This Linux distribution, aimed at enterprise servers and workstations, is the first Red Hat distribution to feature Version 2.6 of the Linux kernel, the first designed to run on systems larger than eight processors, said Derek Rodner, a senior manager for enterprise server marketing at Unisys. RHEL 4 also features the Mandatory Access Control security subsystem developed by the National Security Agency.
- Also in the Red Hat camp, Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys announced that its ES7000 line of servers has achieved Red Hat's RHEL 4 certification. Customers may purchase an RHEL-outfitted ES7000 running 4 to 32 processors, using either 32-bit or 64-bit Intel Xeon or Itanium processors, respectively. Pricing for the Itanium models starts at $39,500.
- Oracle of Redwood Shores, Calif., also announced that its Oracle 9i database, Oracle Application Server, Oracle Collaboration Suite and Oracle E-Business Suite have all been certified by Red Hat to run on RHEL 4.
- IBM announced that it has released a toolset, called Chiphopper, that would allow independent software vendors to develop Linux programs able to run different types of processors without modification. Chiphopper has a middleware layer that provides a single instruction set for numerous processors, including x86 processors made by Intel and IBM's own PowerPC line, according to Carol Stafford, IBM worldwide vice president of Linux sales.
- Hewlett-Packard announced several new Linux software packages. The company has released a number of fixed-cost 'express services' that combine commonly used open-source programs into one deployable package, along with installation, configuration and integration support, according to Dan Gilfix, HP's worldwide Linux marketing manager.
The company has also released plug-ins for its cross-platform OpenView IT infrastructure management software, allowing administrators to keep tabs on MySQL databases, JBoss application servers and Tomcat Java application servers.
'The point of OpenView is having an enterprisewide management approach, and so the tighter integration you have with these applications, the better,' Gilfix said.
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