Over the summer I attended multiple open source-focused events to talk to developers about IBM LinuxONE and Linux on Z. At these events we were meeting developers to talk about the platform and the options available to them for porting their own open source projects to it. To this end, we were promoting the LinuxONE Community Cloud as a first step for developers to see if their application would build and run on the s390x architecture.
However, the first hurdle to get over was explaining what LinuxONE is. When I began conversations with developers, many assumed it was a specific distribution of Linux written for the mainframe.
Our response to this was clear:
LinuxONE is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), Red Hat Enterprise Server (RHEL), and Ubuntu on enterprise-grade hardware.
Ports for all of these Linux distributions are released alongside those with other architectures, including the x86_64 that everyone is familiar with, as well as ARM and POWER. When you run LinuxONE you have the option of using any (or all!) of these officially supported distributions.
Additionally, Debian was the first distribution I made contributions to in the form of packaging, so it holds a special place in my heart. Debian is among a number of distributions that build their own s390x ports, others include Fedora, Slackware, CentOS, and Gentoo.
And if you are a developer interested in trying out a virtual machine on LinuxONE for your project, or exploring other developer-focused experiences on LinuxONE, be sure to visit https://developer.ibm.com/linuxone/
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