Having sold its x86 server business to Lenovo, IBM has set up a programme to persuade Linux customers on its x86 servers, to move across to its current generation of IBM Power systems. The system vendor has been working with the major Linux distributors Canonical, Red Hat and SUSE to address the portability challenges that are holding back many Linux projects.

IBM, which sold its x86 making system unit to Lenovo for $2.3 billion, said it has wrestled with the problems of moving its customer base away from the old x86 server base that it no longer supports. The vendor has worked with its Linux distributors in order to overcome the compatibility problems between applications designed to work with x86 chipsets and the new intended Power processor driven platforms.

According to Doug Balog, general manager for Power Systems at IBM, a collaboration between the system maker, its distributors and key independent software vendors has identified the source of incompatibility. The blockage has been created by the way different server platforms treat data stored in memory, according to Balog.

A truce for little endians

Writing in an IBM blog, Balog called for an end to the tradition of Linux software being written for the x86 architecture using the ‘big endian’ approach to storing bytes in memory. The proposed alternative – dubbed ‘little endian’ – as used on mainframes and IBM’s Power architecture, should be adopted, he argued (the terms big endian and little endian are a reference to Gulliver’s Travels).

IBM, whose Power architecture supports both endian modes, has reportedly been in talks with its major Linux distributors to persuade them to follow suit and add little endian support to their portfolio, in order to give them backward compatibility. IBM has now announced that all its distributors have dropped their ‘big endian only’ policy.

Canonical created a version of Ubuntu Server to support little endian on Power (Ubuntu Server 14.04) in April 2014, with SUSE following suit in October with SUSE Linux Enterprise 12. IBM announced that Red Hat has now released its Enterprise Linux 7.1 Beta, the company’s first distribution to support little endian on Power.

All the ‘universal endian’ compatible releases will now be available through IBM’s Power Development Platform and at its innovation and client centers worldwide.

The compromise will make migration far easier for software vendors, enterprise developers and individuals to convert the Linux systems in their data centres, according to Balog.

“With these resources open source developers can access and test the beta on their own, with additional toolkits created specifically for our Power community,” said Balog.