IBM nears deal to acquire software company Red Hat

Liana B. Baker, Greg Roumeliotis October 28, 2018

 

That's nice to hear. Linux servers with native RAID, multi-CPU support from power9 will be a boon for Linux server markets for small enterprises since they can pay for hardware and get SW support along with it from IBM.

 

IBM's Red Hat acquisition moves forward
The Department of Justice has approved IBM's acquisition of Red Hat. Since IDC thinks Red Hat Enterprise Linux alone is expected to contribute to more than $10 trillion worth of global business revenues in 2019, IBM's $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat is looking better than ever.
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Linux and Open Source | May 7, 2019 -- 20:37 GMT (13:37 PDT)
https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibms-red-hat-acquisition-moves-forward/

"Just ahead of Red Hat Summit in Boston on May 3, the US Department of Justice concluded its review of IBM's proposed Red Hat acquisition and essentially approved the IBM/Red Hat deal. This means the IBM/Red Hat acquisition is still on track for the second half of 2019.

At Red Hat Summit, Red Hat released the results of a commissioned IDC study, which concluded software and applications running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are expected to contribute to more than $10 trillion worth of global business revenues in 2019.

That's about 5% of the worldwide economy for those of you following at home.

Oh, and you read that right. It's "trillion"with a "t" -- not "billion" with a "b".

By this the IDC means the software and applications running on RHEL will "touch" $10 trillion of business revenue this year and grow at twice the rate of the economy. Business revenue will top $188 trillion.

So, what does 'touch' mean? For 2019, IDC has estimated global business revenue of $188 trillion. Of this, IDC estimates that at least 40 percent use software. For 2019, IDC has estimated the total IT "footprint" at $81 trillion. Now, consider all that software has to run on an operating system -- and much of the software "touching" enterprise functions run on servers. IDC knows Linux runs more than half of all servers. Of those, RHEL accounts for around 25% of deployed corporate server Linux operating systems. Do the math.

So, those trillions represents not just Red Hat's influence on the global economy, but how Linux is dominating all of IT. As Cushing Anderson, IDC VP of business consulting said: "As the world's leading enterprise Linux platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux fuels these operations and more, touching trillions of dollars of global business revenue, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and opening tens of billions of dollars in opportunities to ecosystem partners."

How does Red Hat do this? The research found that RHEL is most frequently used for enterprise management and production (26%), IT infrastructure (20%), and customer relationship management (18%). In each workload, customers see an increase in revenues from using RHEL, a decrease in expenses, and/or an increase in employee productivity."

 

Also of note...

RHEL 8 released: It's the last pre-IBM Red Hat Linux Enterprise Linux
The name may not change once IBM gets its hand on RHEL, but this is the last hurrah of the independent Red Hat Linux powerhouse operating system.
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 7, 2019 -- 13:00 GMT (06:00 PDT)
https://www.zdnet.com/article/rhel-8-released-its-the-last-pre-ibm-red-hat-linux-enterprise-linux/

In 2003, Red Hat made a radical bet. It went from being another do-it-all Linux distributor with Red Hat Linux and gambled everything on becoming an enterprise Linux power with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Red Hat won that bet. Soon, however, Red Hat will become part of IBM. So, when Red Hat released RHEL 8 at Red Hat Summit in Boston it will be the last major "pure" Red Hat Linux distro.

RHEL 8 will be a fitting finish to this part of Red Hat's story. As the company states, RHEL 8 "is the operating system redesigned for the hybrid-cloud era and built to support the workloads and operations that stretch from enterprise datacenters to multiple public clouds. Red Hat understands that the operating system should do more than simply exist as part of a technology stack; it should be the catalyst for innovation. From Linux containers and hybrid cloud to DevOps and artificial intelligence (AI), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is built to not just support enterprise IT in the hybrid cloud, but to help these new technology strategies thrive."

They're right. RHEL is far more than just a Linux distribution. It's the foundation for everything and all things business IT in 2019. AI, Internet of Things (IoT), containers, DevOps -- you name it, it runs on Linux. And, quite often that Linux is Red Hat's Linux.

To help get those additional technologies working for your company, RHEL 8 comes with Red Hat Insights. This new program delivers Red Hat's Linux expertise as-a-service to customers. It helps identify and remediate IT issues, from security vulnerabilities to stability problems. It uses predictive analytics based on Red Hat's open tech know how to help administrators avoid problems and unplanned downtime in production environments.

This Red Hat release also introduces Application Streams. This is the latest packaging for Red Hat giving your developers access to the latest languages, frameworks and developer tools without impacting RHEL's core resources. This will keep both your programmers and administrators happy.

Speaking of your sysadmins, RHEL 8 makes it easier for your new admins to get work done by abstracting away many sysadmin tasks with the new RHEL web console. The console provides an intuitive, consistent graphical interface for managing and monitoring the RHEL system, from the health of virtual machines to overall system performance. To further improve ease of use, RHEL supports in-place upgrades for users wanting to upgrade from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8.

The new RHEL also includes Ansible DevOps baked in with RHEL System Roles. System Roles are pre-configured Ansible modules that enable ready-made automated workflows for handling common, complex sysadmin tasks. This makes it easier for new systems administrators to adopt Linux practices and helps to eliminate human error as the cause of common configuration problems."

Ahh, the good 'ole days, before "IRHEL", 'twas a simpler time... - Future me, perhaps.

 

>finally, native RAID support in Linux

Umm... what happened to mdadm?

 

So do we finally get proper GNU Linux for desktop now??
And by that I mean a desktop experience for all users, not just the geek/power user

 

All Linux users must become geek / power users, in order to survive Linux over time. The first time an update craps out their pretty desktop view, and Linux boots back into a console login, so begins the journey.

 

Looks like I will torture myself with Windows 10 then I suppose and Linux remaining experimental use.
I really like to see a proper windows alternative however

 

You could befriend a Linux guru to help you through the tough times until you are able to stand on your own...

There may come a time when a "fascist" pre-configured "Linux-like" OS arrives, kinda like Mac OSX, but for everyone's hardware.

Linux that's locked down and "bullet-proof" - if not in reality at least in their marketing blurbs - then everyone will look for a work-around to break out of the locked in Linux so they can run "real" Linux on it, and then you are back to where we are today.

With infinite configurability comes infinitely complex to manage responsibility. Be careful what you wish for...

The elusive OS that's UNIX, but not UNIX, will it every arrive?

 

MacOS and me never got along and never will, my issue with Windows is because its trying to automate everything which is fine if the user is incompetent but not for power users.
Getting dirty with command lines no problem for me but at the end of the day for the avg user you must have a mature GUI experience.
I always give up when I have to solve issues trying to get Windows games run in Wine back in the past, its easier today thankfully because of automated processes and huge work done by others specially Valve and Crossover with their compatibility layer.
If Microsoft had any form of ballsack left they give an option under install to turn off all automation.

All I ever dream about is a Linux with the GUI experience of Windows 7 but retains its command line option of course.
I suppose we are creeping closer to such a reality year after year.

 

Haven’t taken a look at something like ZorinOS, I take it?

 

Sure, nice to see it's still around

https://zorinos.com/about/

I knew several people that weren't Linux users that moved to it away from Windows around 2010, but that's about all I have heard about someone using it since...I mostly hang out with Unix / Linux / Solaris people, so no surprise I haven't bumped into ZorinOS users.
https://zorinos.com/

Ranked #11 in interest on Distrowatch, so it's doing good:
Popularity: 11 (721 hits per day)

"Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution designed especially for newcomers to Linux. It has a Windows-like graphical user interface and many programs similar to those found in Windows. Zorin OS also comes with an application that lets users run many Windows programs. The distribution's ultimate goal is to provide a Linux alternative to Windows and let Windows users enjoy all the features of Linux without complications. "
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=zorin

And, it's just had a new release:

Releases, download links and checksums:
• 2019-06-05: Distribution Release: Zorin OS 15
• 2019-03-20: Development Release: Zorin OS 15 Beta

Thanks for bringing it up

Maybe you could start a thread about it, and see if you can help people switch?
https://zorinos.com/help/#getting-started
https://zorinos.com/help/install-zorin-os/

And, ZorinOS has Games installation instructions
https://zorinos.com/help/install-games/