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BTW z/OS has Unix subsystem, which enables it to run practically any modern Unix software, including all modern script languages, etc. which are actively used.
by smsm42 4y ago
BTW z/OS has Unix subsystem, which enables it to run practically any modern Unix software, including all modern script languages, etc. which are actively used. So there's no urgent motivation to change the platform for those who're invested in it but want to also use more recent software. I think there's no reason why it couldn't live to be 100 years old - maybe not the most popular software by then, but still alive for those who need it.
- skissane 4y agoI haven't personally done it, but from what I've heard, porting things to z/OS UNIX can be rather painful, due to its use of EBCDIC, and being based on an older UNIX standard (UNIX 95) which means it is missing many newer APIs (for example openat and friends). IBM has now added to z/OS the ability to run z/Linux Docker containers (a feature they call "zCX"), which run in a hypervisor built in to the OS. It is a lot easier to just run the software under Linux, which is all ASCII/UTF-8 and has pretty up-to-date APIs (even though few Linux distributions have formal UNIX certification, Linux generally implements all the standard UNIX APIs, except for obscure things with dubious value and little use). When it is just VMs on the same machine, network communication between two operating systems can be very fast.
- smsm42 4y agoI don't think EBCDIC use is mandatory. It was a while ago, but I did some ports for that Unix, and I don't remember EBCDIC being an issue. Of course, z/Linux is even easier.
- yencabulator 4y agozSeries machines also run Linux virtual machines extremely well (e.g. the internal throughput between VMs is crazy good). Just because Linux becomes popular doesn't mean zSeries stops being relevant to the kinds of corporations it's intended for.