UnitedLinux bears fruit at Comdex

Daily Newsletters

Sign up to ZDNet UK's daily newsletter.

NEWS
The UnitedLinux effort will bear its first fruit on Tuesday at the Comdex Fall 2002 trade show, with SuSE and the SCO Group announcing new products based on the common software underpinnings. SuSE, based in Germany, is providing the operating system software that underlies the UnitedLinux effort, a collaboration designed to counteract Red Hat's dominance in the Linux market. Red Hat's strength -- with nearly three-quarters of 2001 Linux sales, according to IDC -- has been more successful in wooing crucial business partners such as Oracle and Veritas Software. The first beta versions of UnitedLinux software were released in September. Companies in the organisation include SuSE, the SCO Group, Turbolinux in Japan, and Conectiva in Brazil. The companies plan to differentiate their products through higher-level features such as management software. On Tuesday, the SCO Group will release SCO Linux 4 software, while SuSE will release SuSE Enterprise Linux (SLES) 8, company representatives said. SLES 8 works on 32-processor servers and comes with "failover" features so one server can take over if another crashes. The software includes input-output features geared for databases and supports as many as 600 hard drives and 64GB of memory. SuSE customers include Salomon Smith Barney, Boeing, Lufthansa, Miele and Debeka Insurance. Linux, a clone of the Unix operating system, has won a major presence in the computing industry. Market research firm Gartner Dataquest expects $4bn worth of Linux servers to be sold in 2003 with about 800,000 unit shipments. Linux has been popular with do-it-yourselfers such as college students and programmers who enjoy the ability to tinker with the innards of Linux, something made possible by the fact that it's an open-source program. Now Linux is becoming more popular with ordinary businesses as well. Winning the support of software companies, each which must test to make sure their products work with Linux on particular servers, is key to expanding the technology to more mainstream parts of the computing industry. The goal behind the UnitedLinux effort was to reduce these testing and certification headaches by cutting the number of combinations of hardware and software. UnitedLinux is the foundation for the four companies' server version of Linux for 32-bit Intel processors, such as the Pentium and Xeon lines, and for the Advanced Micro Devices chips that work the same way. UnitedLinux doesn't cover products for desktop computers or for non-Intel servers such as IBM's mainframes and Intel's 64-bit Itanium processors. SuSE and Turbolinux have a separate partnership under which Turbolinux uses SuSE's Linux for IBM's higher-end pSeries, iSeries and zSeries servers, which use IBM processors rather than Intel processors.
For full Comdex coverage see ZDNet UK's Fall Comdex 2002 News Focus. Have your say instantly, and see what others have said. Go to the ZDNet UK News Forums.

Post your comment

In order to post a comment you need to be registered and logged in.

You can also log in with Facebook. Log in or create your ZDNet UK account below

  • Login

Will not be displayed with your comment

By signing up for this service, you indicate that you agree to our Terms and Conditions and have read and understood our Privacy Policy. Questions about membership? Find the answers in the Community FAQ

Get ZDNet UK's daily newsletter

Enter your email address to sign up

ZDNet UK Live

UnderINK

I agree with the previous commenter wholeheartedly. I couldn't say it better myself. This is very 'Big Brother'. And while I agree with protecting...

1 hour ago by UnderINK on European e-identity plan to be unveiled this month
Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

Nice to see that Turing's idea of a general purpose computer doing once-hardware-powered tasks in software is now universal ;-) Mary

7 hours ago by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe on Software with everything
Jason Burchell

seriously now. I've only bothered to read a small bit of the comments. do me and the rest of the world a favour. stop saying it does not work or...

10 hours ago by Jason Burchell via Facebook on Music industry negotiating over 24-bit downloads
Philip Charles Cohen

Read about it and weep, John Donahoe ... In addition to Visa’s V.me, there is now MasterCard’s PayPass digital wallet soon to arrive; another...

15 hours ago by Philip Charles Cohen via Facebook on PayPal takes phone-based payments to the high street
apexwm

Leslie Satenstein : Where have you ever seen Mozilla even mention this? Firefox is the most popular browser in the GNU/Linux OS, so I don't see...

15 hours ago by apexwm on Firefox rapid release improves Fedora Linux
songmaster

SHleG: Do you remember building a clockwork scorpion kit (I'm pretty sure I have a photo of it somewhere) — I think it was called something like...

17 hours ago by songmaster on Software with everything
Chris Wortman

Good I love Yahoo! Their search engine is getting better than Google as of late. I find more of what I want on the first page, and usually within...

17 hours ago by Chris Wortman via Facebook on Linux Mint 13 ramps up for KDE release
PatrickG

openhgs has made the point for Windows 8 multiple monitors without realising it! With Windows 7 you have to switch the mouse and so your focus...

19 hours ago by PatrickG on Windows 8 could speed multi-monitor uptake
Leslie Satenstein

Mozilla has threatened to stop supporting Linux. I guess that UBUNTU is going with another browser. I indicated that if Mozilla stops supporting...

21 hours ago by Leslie Satenstein via Facebook on Firefox rapid release improves Fedora Linux
Andy Bolstridge

Much as I abhor Microsoft's licensing practices, this is almost certainly down to purchasing IT equipment via 3rd party consultants - you get the...

21 hours ago by Andy Bolstridge via Facebook on 6 million wasted licences and £1,200 PCs: welcome to government IT
Jack Schofield

@openhgs Windows users have had multiple desktops since Linus started writing Linux. They just haven't shipped as standard because not enough...

2 days ago by Jack Schofield on Windows 8 could speed multi-monitor uptake
Jack Schofield

@Phil at Cloud4 What, Microsoft gets £1,200 per PC and £1,622 per server? Gosh, I'm amazed....

2 days ago by Jack Schofield on 6 million wasted licences and £1,200 PCs: welcome to government IT
craigsc

You guys have no idea what is going on at Autonomy. Autonomy could have been a much more profitable organization. The sales operations at Autonomy...

2 days ago by craigsc on HP cuts 27,000 staff as Autonomy chief Lynch leaves
Moley

How does this impact on dual or multi booting? Seems to me to more or less prohibit this, from Windows 8 anyway. Will Grub 2 recognise Windows 8,...

2 days ago by Moley on Windows 8 start-up speed forces USB boot workaround
apexwm

I don't understand why there cannot be a slight pause during the boot process so the user can press a key. Many operating systems do this, even if...

2 days ago by apexwm on Windows 8 start-up speed forces USB boot workaround
Gavin Goodman

You can now buy the Xi3 modular computer in the UK at http://www.ocdistribution.com . This can be bought with the Tand3m software, pricing and...

2 days ago by Gavin Goodman on CES 2012: Xi3 microSERV3R
Phil at Cloud4

I agree: Mike Lynch can clearly build a business and manage strategy. I suspect the exit of Mike is more likely the end of a planned handover...

2 days ago by Phil at Cloud4 on HP cuts 27,000 staff as Autonomy chief Lynch leaves
Phil at Cloud4

This is unbeleivable government wastage with only one winner... Microsoft 1 - Tax payer Nil!

2 days ago by Phil at Cloud4 on 6 million wasted licences and £1,200 PCs: welcome to government IT
Mispam

So what do you do when you can't boot into windows? Why can't I just hold Shift while I power up instead of having to boot into windows and click a...

2 days ago by Mispam on Windows 8 start-up speed forces USB boot workaround
apexwm

I've also seen that Mac OS X for Intel machines is supposed to run in VirtualBox, which would also be a nice solution. I've never tried it though.

2 days ago by apexwm on xTreme Triple Booting: Linux, Mac & Windows