back to article IBM proffers $1bn for Linux development on Power

After opening up its Power chips to bit fiddlers through an ARM-style licensee model, IBM is pouring $1bn into Linux development on the architecture. The $1bn commitment to Linux on Power was announced by IBM on Tuesday at the Linux conference in New Orleans, and follows Big Blue letting licensees fiddle with Power chips …

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  1. J. R. Hartley

    The title is no longer required.

    Hmmm...

  2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

    The title still is no longer required.

    Good!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Déjà vu

    Doubtless this is much the same as the 2000(?) announcement: the next 10 years normal business expenditure rolled into an impressive sounding PR spewball. I think I read somewhere it even includes the budget for swanky new IBM towers somewhere in France. So sadly not as exciting as it first sounds.

  4. Lars Silver badge
    Linux

    Nice

    Very nice. IBM has made a lot of money on Linux and supported it a lot too. Adding support for Power on Linux is common sense. What I have been hoping for is a IBM Linux desktop distro, why not on Power. Asking for to much, perhaps, but the "Rising open source tide" is no doubt true, and that is fine with me, and again just common sense.

    1. Lars Silver badge

      Re: Nice

      I just want to add that IBM was the second big company, after Microsoft, to understand the value of Linux. The importance of IBM regarding Linux is huge. In the beginning, I suppose, it was more about the Web and DB2. The ability to run Linux on Power has been there all the time. Adding more support is again fine indeed.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nice

        Please can you elaborate in which way Microsoft has "understood the value of Linux"?

        1. hplasm
          Linux

          Re: Nice

          Enough to see it as a threat?

        2. naw

          Re: Nice

          Linux has been ported to and used (both in development and commercially) on IBM Power hardware and mainframe for many years - SUSE & Redhat among various others. You may have forgotten how SCO (former owner of AT&T Unix - later sold to Novell) who also licenced Microsoft Xenix (another Unix derivative) had various long running patent infringment battles against Linux. Microsoft had long been a major share-holder in SCO and later it was discovered that MS had bankrolled SCO's attempts to kill/hinder Linux.

          So yes, I reckon "MS understood the value of Linux" and they didn't like what they saw...

    2. justincormack

      Re: Nice

      There are fine desktop distros for Power eg Fedora. Now finding decent desktop hardware is harder though. There hasn't been much since Apple stopped making it.

  5. Richard 33

    Hardware

    Does this mean we might be able to buy ppc64 hardware. All my ppc64 development is done on an 8 year old Apple G5 (very reasonable at just £150), because that is the only hardware you can buy that has a Power-related chip in it. That I'm aware of anyway ...

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