If the title of this blog entry got your attention, I hope it also gets the attention of everyone that has been saying "death to the mainframe" for the past three decades.

After all, given the number of people who have been trying to portray the mainframe's invisibility as some sort of demise over the years, it seems like that's actually a good indicator of something that works - so well that nobody notices it. Just like that old saying, "housework is something nobody notices unless you don't do it."

So, now, Linux, that friendly operating system with the penguin mascot (named "Tux" as it turns out), has arrived on the invisible platform. Actually, it's been there for nearly a decade - but, as I mentioned in my blog entry from March 12, 2009, its progress has also been somewhat invisible.

As Wikipedia reminds us, IBM first announced mainframe Linux in 2000.

And, ever since then, everyone's been waiting and watching and trying to figure out what has happened to this penguin on its journey into the world of mainframe.

Well, someone has finally found the answer - and it's good news!

According to a Press Release that CA issued this past Wednesday, the folks at TheInfoPro have done a survey of large mainframe shops that have or are getting mainframe Linux, in order to find out what people are doing (see http://ca.com/mainframe/linuxresearch). The answer? They're growing it, and moving both new and existing (especially distributed) applications to it, in order to take advantage of the significant strengths (virtualization, security, scalability...) and cost savings available on the mainframe.

Since CA has a large and growing stable of products for managing mainframe Linux (see ca.com/mainframe/linux), this is good news for CA and the rest of the mainframe world, as it affirms the choice to join this penguin on its sojourn.

So, what about the death of the penguin? Just as with the mainframe, nothing could be further from the truth. It's just been too busy taking root under the surface (if I may mix metaphors), and taking on many of the same production qualities that we've come to take for granted on the mainframe.

Something tells me we'll be hearing plenty more about this before long.

What do you think? Are you or your organization using or considering Linux on the mainframe? What do you have in mind for it?