Not to a hobbyist, unfortunately, especially when Hercules does the job just as well (AFAIK, at least) and is free. Compared to what you pay for the hardware a

Not to a hobbyist, unfortunately, especially when Hercules does the job just as well (AFAIK, at least) and is free. Compared to what you pay for the hardware and a support contract and the OS license, it is practically free. But I don't understand why IBM doesn't just run z/VM on a mainframe and allows hobbyists to run their own VM with an operating system of their choice. Doesn't even have to be free! Five or ten bucks a month for one or two vCPUs and a GiB of RAM would be acceptable to me. I get that due to the high profit margins[0], mainframes are a real cash cow for IBM, but it's sad they complete ignore the low-end market to preserve those margins. [0] Last I heard, the mainframe divisions generates 10% of IBM's revenue, but 25% of the profits, so those margins must be juicy.