Developer Resources
Linux software developers certified for System z can appeal to large enterprises and open up additional market opportunity for their products. There are few barriers to doing so as IBM offers a no-charge 30-day Linux on System z "test drive", allowing Linux developers of any size access to a live mainframe Linux guest running under z/VM for compiling and testing software. IBM also offers its Chiphopper program to help developers write and publish cross-platform Linux software. Siebel (now Oracle), for example, used the Chiphopper program to bring its Java-based CRM software to both Linux on System z and z/OS. The official IBM Chiphopper website provides more details about the program. Developers of open source software can make use of a community development system provided by IBM.
The developer resources can be particularly helpful for performance tuning. Performance tuning is particularly important in mainframe environments with large numbers of users. Mainframe customers tend to expect applications which can scale to high numbers of users and transactions, because that's how they use their systems every day. Sloppy programming is less tolerated, although the mainframe operating environment will keep any such programming from degrading other OS instance's performance. Some Linux application programmers do not expect this exceptional focus on code quality that the mainframe culture and mainframe operating environment demand. However, most developers quickly understand and appreciate this phenomenon, and there's a great deal of professional pride among the growing community of developers with Linux on System z experience.
Linux on System z supports Unicode and ASCII just like any other Linux distribution—it is not an EBCDIC-based operating system. There is nothing inherent in z/Architecture that requires EBCDIC. Linux is able to read kernel parameters in EBCDIC; this ability is used in z/VM installations. Even z/OS, for that matter, supports Unicode, ASCII, and EBCDIC. Moving Linux applications to Linux on System z almost always involves just simple recompilation of the source code. The few exceptions might include source code which assumes a particular "endian" byte order or inline machine instructions for a specific processor, although these issues are not unique to Linux on System z, usually easily remedied, and quite rare.
Although programs can be easily cross compiled to z/Architecture binaries on non-mainframe Linux system, at some point such binary is usually tested either on a real mainframe, or at least on an emulated one.
Read more about this topic: Linux On System Z
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