Debian goes "Carrier grade" Linux
 

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/21...-gains-carrier

Visit link for several hyper-linked words in the article.

Debian Linux gains carrier grade status

Linux distro muscles up for telecommunications users
Tom Sanders in California, vnunet.com 06 Jun 2006
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The Debian Linux distribution has certified under the Open Source Development Labs' (OSDL) Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) specifications.

The certification indicates that the Linux distribution meets a set of requirements for availability, reliability, performance and service response times that are typically required by telecommunications providers.

"CGL registration marks an important milestone in Debian's support for Linux in communications infrastructure," said Debian project leader Anthony Towns.

"With the assistance of our industry partners in meeting OSDL's CGL specifications, we look forward to better addressing the needs of the increasing market for Linux systems in telecommunications."

HP has been pushing the CGL registration. The server vendor uses Debian on servers for telecommunications applications.

The CGL certification is limited to the Debian 3.1 version, codenamed 'Sarge'. The new release furthermore offers security updates and deploys the 2.6.8 Linux kernel.

There are currently eight Linux distributions that meet the CGL criteria, including SuSe Linux Enterprise Server, MontaVista and Asianux.

Red Hat doesn’t sign up to the standard because the Linux vendor believes that it is lacking. Compliance for instance isn't audited, forcing users to rely on the distribution's reputation and track record. Red Hat claims that it incorporates about 85 per cent of the CGL's requirements, and dismisses the remaining 15 per cent as "immature technologies".

I think it's a good thing if service carriers really do use carrier certified linux because then people trying to pick a distro for the first time can say that companies whom incomes depend on this working right are using it so it must have some quality!

Yet using the same OS on your desktop that is used in a switching and routing warehouse may not be the optimal choice!

At this point in time, the "quality" of Linux is really no longer in question. There are millions of CPUs now that are running this OS.

Historically, neither Linux nor Unix competed very strongly (in their stock, un-modified forms) in areas that demanded "real-time" response (as in, guaranteed interrupt latency, CPU-share, and so on), nor in applications that demanded guaranteed hardware-availability (as in the old "Tandem" brand computers).

It's good to see Linux vendors making formal advances into this marketplace, even if some of their peers believe that the efforts are not yet quite mature.

I just made the decision to move my server over to Debian, nice to see this news combat buyers remorce (or the open source equivalent of time investment ;)