Khan and Masters also spent some time commenting on IBM’s committment
to Linux on its mainframes, stating that while it has no intention of
running Linux on its high end machines, it does plan to offer complete
compatibility with Linux applications. “Native Linux doesn’t bring
anything to the party on this scale of a product,” said Khan, “the
kernel doesn’t have the capabilities for high end [systems].”
According to Khan, Linux as a server OS is a “fundamentally an Intel
phenomenon,” and IBM’s focus on the operating system is “ill-advised.”