A jellyfish and a mainframe – pleia2’s weblog

Comfortable Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) launch day!

April has been an thrilling month. On April fifth, the IBM z16 was launched. For these of you who aren’t conscious, that is the IBM zSystems class of mainframes that I’ve been engaged on at IBM for the previous three years. As a Developer Advocate, I’ve been in a position to spend so much of time digging into the internals, studying concerning the implementation of DevOps practices and incorporation of Linux into environments, and a lot extra. I’ve additionally had the chance to work with dozens of open supply tasks within the Linux world as they get their software program to run on the s390x structure. This consists of working with a number of Linux distributions, and most just lately forming the Open Mainframe Undertaking Linux Distributions Working Group with openSUSE’s Sarah Julia Kriesch.

In consequence, I’m delighted to proceed to spend a little bit time with Ubuntu!

For the Ubuntu 22.04 launch, the workforce at Canonical has already been working exhausting to include key options of the IBM z16, which Frank Heimes has gone into element about on a technical degree on the Ubuntu on Massive Iron Weblog, IBM z16 launches with Ubuntu 22.04 (beta) help, and in addition over on Ubuntu.com with IBM z16 is right here, and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS beta is prepared. Lastly, Frank printed: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS obtained launched

Certainly, timing was fortuitous, as Frank notes:

“Because the growth of the brand new IBM z16 occurred in parallel with the event of the upcoming Ubuntu Server launch, Canonical was in a position to make sure that Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS (beta) already consists of help for brand spanking new IBM z16 capabilities.

And this isn’t restricted to the help for the core system, but in addition consists of its peripherals and particular services”

Now that it’s launch day, I wished to rejoice with the group by sharing just a few particulars of the IBM z16 and a few highlights from these weblog posts.

So first – the IBM z16 is so fairly! It is available in one to 4 frames, relying on the wants of the shopper. Inside the utmost configuration it has as much as 200 Processor Models, that includes 5.2Ghz IBM Telum Processors, 40 TB of reminiscence, and 85 LPARs.

As for a way Ubuntu was in a position to leverage enhancements to 22.04 to benefit from the whole lot from the AI Accelerator on the IBM Telum processor to new Quantum-Protected applied sciences, Frank goes on to share:

“Since we continually enhance Ubuntu, 22.04 was up to date and modified for IBM z16 and different platforms within the following areas:

• nearly your complete cryptography stack was up to date, as a result of change to openssl 3
• some Quantum-safe choices can be found: library for quantum-safe cryptographic algorithms (liboqs), post-quantum encryption and signing instrument (codecrypt), implementation of public-key encryption scheme NTRUEncrypt (libntru)
• Safe Execution obtained refined and the virtualization stack up to date
• the chacha20 in-kernel stream cipher (RFC 7539) was {hardware} optimized utilizing SIMD
• the kernel zcrypt machine driver is now in a position to exploit the brand new IBM zSystems crypto {hardware}, particularly Crypto Express8S (CEX8S)
• and eventually a model new protected key crypto library bundle (libzpc) was added

This can be a actually fascinating time to be a Linux distribution on this ecosystem. Past these improbable strides made with Ubuntu, the collaboration that’s already going down throughout distributions in our new Working Group has been thrilling to look at.

Sustain the great work, everybody! And Ubuntu associates, pause a bit at this time to rejoice, you’ve earned it.

Jellyfish earrings!

Facet observe: I haven’t talked about the IBM LinuxONE. As some background, the IBM z16 can have Built-in Facility for Linux (IFL) processors, so you may already run Linux on this technology of mainframes! However the LinuxONE product line solely has IFLs, which means they solely run Linux. As a separate product, it could actually have completely different launch dates, and the present timeline that’s been printed is “second half of 2022” for the announcement of the following LinuxONE. Keep tuned, and know that the whole lot I’ve shared about Ubuntu 22.04 for the IBM z16 will even be true of the following LinuxONE.