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off the Press - News & Commentary
by
Keith Benicek, Managing Editor
US Navy
Subs to use Apple Xservers, BUT not with OS X! It's a big Linux Victory.
August 7th, 2003
Loveland, Colorado. – On August 6th. Terra Soft Solutions, Inc., a leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions, announced some very surprising new. News that has shocked a lot of people at Intel, Apple and the Linux community. Terra Soft Solutions has been awarded the contract to fulfill a unique sonar imaging system for the United States Navy, through defense contractor Lockheed Martin, with Apple G4 Xservers, BUT not with Apple OS X Server addition! With Linux, that is Yellow Dog Linux for PowerPC, which is Terra Soft Solutions own version of the more and more popular Linux, a variant of UNIX.
Apple’s own server system OS X (10.x), is also a UNIX variant; that is a BSD (Berkeley System Distribution) version more specifically, or it was as it drifts more and more away from the true form and function of UNIX. Most true UNIX engineers will tell you that it barely resembles a UNIX variant any longer, as Apple dilutes it in a rambling manner trying to find a “consumer direction”.
Terra Soft is an Apple Authorized Proprietary Solutions Provider, and could have used Apple’s Xserver version of OS X . Terra Soft will be delivering 260 Yellow Dog Linux powered Apple Xserves to Lockheed Martin by the end of October 2003, which will be used for real-time
sonar image processing.
It was Lockheed Martin that had chosen to move with the Apple Xserves
and Yellow Dog Linux. This combination provides a solution twice as dense,
less power consumptive, and higher performance than the previous solution
at a similar cost.
Kai Staats, co-founder
and CEO of Terra Soft states, "This brings to fruition two years
of effort with an intense recent six months of research, coordination,
prototype development and testing -- a great deal of hands-on collaboration
with the Lockheed Martin engineering team. We are proud to implement Yellow
Dog Linux in this capacity, to provide a solution trusted by both Lockheed
Martin and United States Navy."
"Terra Soft's Red Hat-based OS currently provides an optimal balance of open-source flexibility, AltiVec-enhanced performance, and community support," states Joe Fanto, lead project engineer for Lockheed Martin.
While Apple’s Xservers (hardware) have gained some favor and good commercial review; however Apple’s OS X server software has not been found acceptable in either Business, Commercial or Industrial use. I’m certain that many are wondering why Lockheed Martin did not consider Apple OS X Server, I’d bet Intel is furious that the Wintel platform wasn’t chosen too. I also be willing to bet that this Xserver/Linux combination is only the beginning, which had better have Apple concerned.
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