With vendors such as IBM, Oracle, and Sun starting to support Linux and companies such as Red Hat Inc. offering shrink-wrapped Linux for a modest price, the support issue has begun to recede. But Caldera, Penguin Computing, Red Hat, VA Linux Systems, and other early Linux providers aren't exactly the kind of household names that make CIOs feel comfortable. Linuxcare Inc. in San Francisco is just one company that provides Linux support and professional services. Linux is also attracting application support from commercial developers. Almost any Unix application can be ported to Linux, requiring recompiling and possibly some tweaking of code where developers use vendor-specific features.
Limited scalability is another criticism of Linux in the enterprise.
This results from the current limitation of eight processors in a Linux symmetrical multiprocessing configuration. By contrast, enterprise systems provided by Sun support 64 processors, and IBM supports more than 500, according to IDC's Kuznetsky. Scalability, however, can be delivered in a couple of ways, each with advantages and disadvantages. Big Unix servers, those packed with many processors, provide vertical scalability. These systems are expensive to buy but are straightforward to manage.