The market for supercomputers is vastly different than the commercial market. Even though Linux is used on supercomputers, it isn't an off-the-shelf version that companies purchase from Red Hat or Novell to run commercial applications.
There is also truth in what Octave mentioned in the supply and demand of Linux personnel. AIX and Solaris will always be around, just as there will always be a need for z/OS and MVS experience. The pool for Linux is high because somebody can download it and install on a PC or laptop at home. To play with POWER you'd have to buy used from ebay, and if you want to play with AIX 6.1 you would need POWER4-POWER7 which will cost more than a POWER3. Then if you want to use LPARs, buy an HMC. That gets expensive for a home user to learn. To use HACMP you can't do that at home. To use GPFS you can't do that at home. Only companies can afford that, but the benefits of POWER/AIX are enormous. One can buy an inexpensive Sun Fire or Ultra Sparc server to run Solaris, but to use logical domains or fault-isolated hard partitions, you would have to work for a company that has the money. But again, the benefits to companies are great. So with a surplus of Linux people, pay will go down. While the need for AIX and Solaris will always be there, the supply of people who know them will go down, but pay will be higher. Case in point is mainframe people. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
