Hello everybody Let's me introduce.
My name is Piotr Kolasinski, I've been Mainframe System Programmers since 1998, Linux user since 1994 (Slackware - plenty of diskettes) and Debian user since 2000 (Potato). I've implemented Linux on the Mainframe in some places in Poland, and supported Linux installation for IBM as the contractor. First installation was done by me on G5 S/390 IBM processor (named CPC - Central Processor Complex) on bare metal. Later installations were mostly under IBM virtualisation system VM (now z/VM), partially on dedicated CPU engines named IFL (Integrated Facility for Linux). Two weeks ago I started installation of Debian on real IBM Mainframe and fought with many problems on that. So I had wrote message to this list (from different source email address), but I didn't receive any answer (I don't blame anyone :-) ). So I tried to find more information on Debian wiki and I found only short and outdated information about s390 port. I though that I can help. On my request for joining to the wiki answered Paul Wise, proposing to join as the contributor. In short - that is why I'm here. I hope that I can help in some areas, maybe testing or writing some wiki pages, maybe in other ways. I know the Mainframe architecture, wrote above 5 years programs in C, later switching to Java. My knowledge is not only about Mainframe but also another areas (middleware, mostly IBM), Java ecosystem, Unix administration and programming, some Perl knowledge, Python, Rexx and others). My experience with Mainframe include also assembler (what is must to know for system programmer), architecture details (address spaces, addressing, cross-memory services etc.), other hardware (DASD - mainframe disks, tapes, terminals etc.) and virtualisation system z/VM. I hope that I can help - Debian to my knowledge is the one of two independent (not commercial) distributions (another is Ubuntu). Two others are Suse and RedHat, but there is no alternatives freely available (CentOS and Fedora doesn't provide s390x anymore). So in my opinion it is very important to keep and support that architecture, especially to give the people the choice. Kind regards Piotr (aka nome)
