Linux Affinity

Richard Ferri

The success of Linux and open source over the recent months has made many of the traditionally high-end UNIX vendors take notice. IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard have all announced steps to embrace Linux on their traditionally high-end, enterprise UNIX operating systems, AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX, respectively. All three companies have either provided a method of porting applications from Linux to their operating system or ported a number of Linux applications and made them available to the public, or both. What interest do these time tested, UNIX vendors have in this upstart Linux? After all, it's clear to those who follow UNIX that Linux is the least mature operating system of the four. Why would these lofty distributors care about embracing Linux?

Strategic Approaches to Linux Affinity

If you look at the explosion of the open source community, examine the curriculum among college and graduate students, and check out various publishers' book offerings, the signs are clearly there -- Linux is coming. With its acceptance by the major UNIX vendors, one might even say that Linux has arrived. Given the number of talented developers working in Linux and open source, the number of machines now installed with Linux, the skill set that new programmers coming out of college have acquired, IBM, Sun, and HP have all realized that Linux skills and numbers of devotees are growing at a faster rate than for their respective operating systems. So, why not accommodate these new Linux devotees with the best of both worlds? They can have the look and feel of Linux, and their favorite Linux applications, on more mature operating systems like AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX.

The three vendors have taken similar approaches to Linux affinity. HP-UX provides libhplx, which is a library that contains about 200 Linux-compatible APIs, related file headers, and their sources.