Hi ! According to the reliable sources, press releases and media coverage the largest Linux migration (several millions of PCs and servers currently running Windows XP/Vista and MS Servers) ever is about to start. The first news come from national-wide Russian Post service (state-owned company) which signed an agreement with Red Hat and IBM to switch MS-based platform to Red Hat Linux and Open Referent. For more detailed information, see links below (in Russian): http://www.russianpost.ru/company/ru/home/press/news/item?newsid=3161 http://www.gazeta.ru/techzone/2008/03/12_a_2665554.shtml However, this only the beginning. Industry sources suggest that majority or state-owned companies and institutions are on the track of the same migration path. Most notably this list includes: Gazprom - world largest gas mining company (329 billions USD capitalization value, 600,000 employees) - contract with Novell, IBM and Oracle will be signed within 3 months Rosneft - one of the world largest oil mining companies (79 billions USD capitalization value) - contract with Novell, IBM and Oracle will be signed within 3 - 6 months Transneft - one of the world largest oil pipe companies (over 50,000 km of oil pipes) - exact date unknown, but no later then 4Q of 2008 or 1Q of 2009 Sberbank - largest bank in Russian Federation (over 800 branches) - Red Hat, Oracle and IBM are planning to outline all details within 6 months.(looks like Sberbank will run Oracle databases on IBM System z10 servers and Red Hat Linux) OAK (Objedinennaja Aviastroitelneja Korpracija - translated from Russian as United Aviation Manufacturing Corporation) - one of the world largest aviation design and manufacturing companies - migration planned within 2 years, further information not available yet. They currently develop so called FCP OS (Future Combat Platform) which is based on embedded Linux with real-time patches and rich clustering capabilities.. Additionally, Linux kernel will run on new-generation MCST-R (formely Elbrus E2k) processors, based on revolutionary VLIW implementation. A very brief into to VLIW you can find here: http://snow.prohosting.com/guru4mac/cpu_2_vliw.html Need to say this is only a handful of companies (out of hundreds) which will join Linux user club within very short time. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org