Ubuntu for IA64 - Gelato meeting report

[T Simonnet]

Hello Mark,

I'm just back from Beijing. I've presented to the
Gelato members Ubuntu Linux as a potential
enterprise-grade IA64 linux distribution and asked for
it to be a Gelato certified distribution (to integrate
Gelato's research projects and to provide standardized
and up-to-date distribution).

One member first suggested that you have to pay to get
something (a la Red Hat), but he finally changed his
mind ;)

Chinese universities use an IA64 port of RedFlag Linux
(http://www.redflag-linux.com/eindex.html), we
couldn't find out whether they are willing to change
that. HP Labs use Debian, but are able to use any kind
of free distribution without support.

On the other hand, many members want to have a
standard, up-to-date, Linux distribution for their
clusters, grids, and standalone servers. Many persons
are ok to work on the port but there was no further
discussion about its "future support" (ie: next
revisions).

The first step of Gelato collaboration would be to
start the project. HP Universities Relations
department asked me to organize the various stages of
the collaboration (schedule, tasks, means,
localization, evolution steps).

HP is able to provide some boxes for development. As a
new Gelato sponsor, Intel will provide the members
with some prototype processors. Mid november, Intel
will start a new grant program and will select
eligible projects based on their abstracts.

My goal is to create a collaborative team to release
first an IA64 Ubuntu distribution suitable for:
 - grid computing usage (grid tools and scientific
apps packages)
 - clustering usage (clustering tools packages)
 - standalone servers

It's worth noting that 6 universities of ChinaGrid
organization own an IA64 cluster :)

SGI will be the next Gelato federation sponsor. At
that time we can consider the workstation side of the
project :)

I will soon make a call for Gelato's people to create
this team. I have to wait for HP's clearance first.

Thierry Simonnet



		
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