Linux software computer associate

(Reuters) - IBM Corp. said last Tuesday that it has begun selling groups of server computers with system management software and the Linux operating system in a move that the computer giant says will expand the use of Linux.

Linux is free open-source software, which means that all code is public and can be adapted by companies and individuals. It competes with other operating systems, such as the popular Unix operating system.

Combining Linux-based computing systems with management software can make it easier for corporations to use Linux-based server groups to run Internet applications like transaction processing, Armonk, New York-based IBM said.

"What this really does is makes it easier to deploy a Linux cluster because of combination of hardware, software and services," said Stacey Quandt, an associate analyst at Giga Information Group.

Linux is appealing because of its price and performance, which can be less than with a comparable Unix-based system, Quandt said.

Currently, universities and research labs are the largest users of Linux clusters because they have the technical expertise needed to set up the systems, IBM said. The systems can entail from four to 1,000 different computers working together on the same application.

Linux is already creeping into more commercial markets, like in the movie business, where studios use it to work on special effects and animation.

"We've moved away from a bag-of-parts kind of business, which is the way a lot of people have been acquiring clusters today, which is that they get a whole bunch of parts and then assembly is required, to a state where we deliver the finished product," said IBM's Dave Turek, vice president of emerging technologies.

The servers are standardized and based on microprocessors, or the brains of the computer, from Intel Corp.

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