Apple servers and Red Hat

[wymer100]

MacRumors has post several articles over the past few months about Apple's potential to enter the server market. I was wondering if the following scenario is possible. We know that Apple is getting into the high-end 3d environment but lacks a decent rendering farm-type server. Presumably, Apple is working on something (or will buy someone) to use with Renderman, etc. If apple is going to invest the resources into creating rackmounted servers, there wouldn't be all that much more expense to create corporate servers. I know that the servers are different, but the research to create them would be shared. A couple of weeks back, Red Hat announced that their Linux OS is going to start running on G4's. Red Hat wouldn't get into this market if there weren't potential. Could Apple and Red Hat teamup and deliver corporate servers? By running Linux, corporations wouldn't have to throw away their old Linux software and invest in new software to run under OSX server. IBM has PowerPC servers running Linux, there shouldn't be any reason against Apple getting into the fold. (Except, profit potential and support issues.)

nate

 

[PCUser]

There are several distros of Linux (such as... *drum roll* LinuxPPC) that already work on the G4 and other PowerPC variants... http://www.linux.org/dist/list.html. What would Apple gain by working with RedHat as opposed to the other Linux distro makers who have made their distros work on PPC architechture a lot longer then RedHat?

 

[wymer100]

Red Hat

I know there are other versions of Linux that will run on PowerPC (LinuxPPC, SuSE, etc.) I had the understanding that Red Hat was one of the more popular Linux developers for corporate servers. The main advantage of having Red Hat and Apple together would be easy integration on the software side. You would only need Apple hardware and nothing else if you were currently running Red Hat on the servers.

nate

 

[PCUser]

I was under the impression that Apple wanted to bill it's software AND hardware solution... as in MacOS X on a Mac, not RedHat on a Mac...? (I think that's what you're getting at.)

Besides, Linux and MacOS X are both variants of UNIX-clones. I imagine it would be a matter of rewriting code for a few different libraries and then recompiling to run Linux software on MacOS X... I don't own a mac with MacOS X, so I don't know for sure... anyone who owns both have any insights?

 

[wymer100]

Actually, Linux and OSX use different kernels. OSX is based on NeXT which is based on FreeBSD. As far as I know, you just need to recompile to run on both machines, as PCUser suggested. It may be tricker than that with different GUI's, but I don't know.

My thought was that Apple wouldn't necessarily have to invest in additional server development if all the technology could be obtained with a deal with Red Hat. I know how much apple likes to control every aspect of computing (which is both good and bad), but striking a corporate alliance with a solid software company that they can't purchase might be a next best thing.

Apple announced today (after I started this topic. Conspiracy theorists could have fun with this!) that they will have rackmounted servers next week so I guess things will be answered then. Anyway, this topic is all about speculation and tying together a bunch of semirelated topics

nate

"From apple, people expect perfection.
From microsoft, people expect something slightly less annoying."
-anon.

 

[gbojim]

Actually, Linux and OSX use different kernels. OSX is based on NeXT which is based on FreeBSD. As far as I know, you just need to recompile to run on both machines, as PCUser suggested. It may be tricker than that with different GUI's, but I don't know.

For command line programs this is exactly the case. I have downloaded the source for several utilities that I run on both OS X and Linux and a simple compile is all that is needed. As for GUI apps - need to be totally re-written to run under Quartz. You can get a copy of X-Windows to run on OS X and use that for GUI apps, but the interface is not even close to OS X.

 

[PCUser]

All of RedHat's "technology" is freely available as source code* that anyone can reuse... however, it is covered by the GPL (http://www.linux.org/info/gnu.html). Any code that is derived from it must also be covered by the GPL (and freely available as source*). It's a viral effect: your code uses GPL'd code... and your code is now covered by the GPL.

RedHat can not waive the GPL for a specific company (such as Apple). The GPL specifically forbids that. Also, I highly doubt that most of the code is written by RedHat. RedHat makes distros... collections of applications written by different developers (who released their code under the GPL or a license that is friendly to the terms of the GPL) and assembled into one working package.

(I know that Linux uses a different kernel then MacOS X... technically, the term "Linux" is just the Linux kernel; however, 'Linux' is generally used as a referrence to a distrobution of the Linux kernel and additional programs--such as XWindows. Both the Linux kernel and the FreeBSD kernel are clones of UNIX.)

*As the Linux crowd likes to say, "'Free' as in speech not 'free' as in beer"... you may be required to pay for a copy of the source code, but you must be allowed access to the source code.

 

[wymer100]

Thanks for all the great information.


nate

At least with free beer, you usually get free pretzels.