 Welcome to my presentation about Linux distributions collaboration on the mainframe. Yes, I'm speaking about collaboration. I don't watch any Linux distribution as a competitor anymore. We have got a working group at the open mainframe project for all Linux distributions. And therefore, I will speak, firstly, something about myself. Then you will receive an overview about the mainframe and the open mainframe project. What is that? Then we are coming to the Linux distribution working group, which is part of the open mainframe project. And I will tell you something about our goals for all Linux distributions and upstream projects now. I would expect all here are available because you are pro open source communities. We are upstream working together. And therefore, we have decided to include also upstream projects now that we can collaborate better together. And then we are coming to support you as developers that you can receive support in development and architecture-specific stuff, as an example, the S390X architecture. And what is the Linux One Community Cloud or the Linux One Open Source Software Community Cloud that you can receive the VMs for free on our mainframe as developers? Something about myself. I am Sarah Julia Krisch. And I am working as a lead IT OT software engineer at Accenture. I am doing that part-time because I am also a part-time master student in computer science at Friedrich Alexander University in Erlum-Nürnberg. In my free time, I am an open source contributor until 11 years now. Yes, 11 years because I have got a pre-education in computer science as a computer science expert. And I was a student with work experience because I have worked as a Linux system administrator. And now I am a member of the release engineering team. I am responsible for the S390X architecture at OpenSUSE. And I am a team lead for OpenSUSE systems. I raised the hand that I want to pound the Linux distribution working group together with one IVMR. Therefore, I am also one founder of that. And I am speaking for all Linux distributions who have joined to us. What is the mainframe? On the right side, you can see all sizes which are available from IVM as our mainframe. The smallest one here is the latest release from April that is a rack-mounting system. And the mainframes are well-known as large high-performance computing systems, especially used for banking systems, influences, and everywhere where you have multiple transactions in parallel. Now it is also available in a smaller version. And if you are speaking about architectures, they are also well-known as big Indian systems. And the architecture is the S390X architecture. It is used for mission-critical data, like banking systems, as I have explained. And you can run thousands of VMs on such a system. From that, we are coming to the OpenMainframe project, the OpenMainframe project has been founded in the year 2015 and is under the hood of the Linux Foundation. The focal point is the deployment and usage of Linux in open source in our mainframe computing environment. And yes, we as Linux distributions said, OK, if you have got all the usage of Linux as a focal point, then we want to be integrated. Because if you can see mainframe-centric projects under the hood of the OpenMainframe project, more COS-specific or general AC-specific, you can see different projects here which are used mostly for COS and not Linux. Some of them are for the improvement of the command line that you can connect better and that it should be as an open source software. Or so we as for better deployment of Linux and everything else on CVM. But I want to highlight one thing. They have got also a mentorship program. Therefore, if you are interested for mentorship any way in the area as a mentee or a mentor, we are supporting also the enablement of open source projects for the mainframe for Linux especially. And therefore, there are many projects under the OpenMainframe project. Then we are coming to the hot topic, working groups. There are three working groups available. I have joined two of them. The Linux distribution working group exists since two years now. The modernization working group, I have joined as a Linux contributor. But the focus of mainframe modernization should not be only COS related. I want to have also a Linux background inside of that. And then there is also the cobalt working group available which is also responsible for the cobalt programming course at the OpenMainframe project. We have started two years ago, shortly after the IBM CDAY with a kickoff of community Linux distributions. Because I and Elizabeth, we said, we don't want to have one Linux distribution for the mainframe. We want to have support and infrastructure available for all of us. And especially, IBM said in the past, we provide only official support for Rails, Les, and Ubuntu. We said, we want to have also really good support for all community distributions. Therefore, I have reached out to Fedora. Dan Horag has been available for Fedora when Elizabeth went to Debian. And we have received Ryan for that. And with that, we created our Linux distribution working group. Now, we are more. Afterwards, in the next step, we said we want to include all enterprise Linux distributions. Then, Sousa has joined in the next step. Ubuntu has joined in the next step. And Dan Horag said he wants to be the representative for Fedora and Red Hat in our Linux distribution working group. Therefore, to the Red Haters, if you are interested for speaking for Red Hat and supporting Dan on the other side, you can join us. We need a second person that Fedora and Red Hat have got the same split as Sousa and Open Sousa. One Linux distribution for one person should be enough. But anyways, that was the next step to integrate the enterprise Linux distributions. And then after my talk at Fostamp in the year 2022, Ima Linux and Rocky Linux have joined also. But if any other Linux distribution wants to receive support for building for S390X, I can join. Our structure is we have got our founders as co-chairs. I am an Open Sousa representative, and I'm working for Accenture. Elisabeth is Ubuntu member. Therefore, she has been the second founder from Ubuntu's side as an IBM employee. Now, she is also the head of the open source program office at IBM. Therefore, we have got the highest level at IBM for open source software within our Linux distribution working group. Then we have got one representative for every Linux distribution. We need that for the input and that we can share our knowledge, whether we can fix something in other Linux distributions if anything is happening. And another Linux distribution has got a solution. And additionally on top, we say also upstream developers are welcome during our meetings and our sponsor has been Sousa at the beginning. Our goals at the Linux distribution working group is to create a place to collaborate across Linux distributions. We are an open mainframe project mailing list, Viki and Jet. Yes, we have got a Viki. We have got a Jet. We have got a mailing list. Our mostly used place is the mailing list because you can write where I have got a problem. We fix that. Can you receive support? And mostly, you receive support within two or three hours from IBM's side or from our Linux distributions. And that is providing also a space for distributions to request for help on the S390 export. And then a topic from Elizabeth. We want to ensure any and all infrastructure which is required is available for supporting the ports. That is the mainframe in the background. Red Hat and Sousa have got mainframes. Canonical has got a mainframe. Fedora is using the Red Hat mainframe. OpenSousa is using the Sousa mainframe. And Debian has got our own mainframe. Almal Linux and Rocky Linux have received also infrastructure. But in case what I want to give as an example to this goal is that nobody on Debian's side from the infrastructure sponsors wanted to be responsible for the mainframe anymore. And the CI CD pipeline, as an example, didn't work anymore. And that was the reason that we said, OK, we want to transfer all the pipeline stuff into the Linux One Community Cloud that IBM can be responsible for infrastructure for Debian continuously. Therefore, if anywhere will be a shutdown of a mainframe, our Linux distribution working group has got this goal. And therefore, you will receive a new mainframe or you will receive a transfer of the mainframe or the community distributions. As an example, we'll receive alternative mainframes where they can receive infrastructure for pipelines and buildings. Then the topic what I wanted to have within it is the better support from IBM to fix S390X specific bugs. In the past, that has happened mostly for enterprise distributions only, now you can receive a support continuously. And really fast, I would say if I want to create a bug report because of a kernel problem, I'm receiving a bug fix within one day now. But it's a really improvement, I would say. Therefore, if you are writing to our mailing list or sending a bug report to the program managers at IBM, you have got a really fast response there now. From that, we are coming to our collaborative process. We want to collaborate and support each other. We don't watch us as competitors anymore. And we are doing our problem discussions on our mailing list as a first step. We can reproduce issues sometimes in other build pipelines if anything is happening. We have got open discussions on the mailing list about problems. And then we are forwarding issues and ideas of improvements for IBM. As an example, the user kernel developer wanted to receive an improvement in the tooling suite for the kernel configuration. The distinguished engineer Ulrich Weigand has interacted. A nice idea, I will forward. And within two weeks, they created a patch for that. Therefore, yes, the distinguished engineer Ulrich Weigand is also available on the mailing list and in our discussions. And then we have got a collaborative small project. I will bring in on the next slide the example with OpenQA. But anyways, we have got also monthly meetings, which has come together with a review. What has happened in the last month is all resolved what has been happened on our mailing list as an input and to-do task. And then a discussion what we want to do next. And whether we have got new releases and everything else, therefore, we are reviewing all. And we are creating new goals for the future there. One small project, what has happened, is also the S390X test contributions for OpenQA. Some of you will know OpenQA is a testing suite from OpenSuser, which has been used also for Fedora, Debian, and Gantu in the past. And of course, it's less. And Ivalinux has joined using OpenQA and said, we want to enable the support of Redhead KVM in OpenQA. They did that. We have announced that on our mailing list. And RockyLinux stepped up. We want to use it also, and we want to integrate also our contributions. Therefore, we are now open users, less Fedora, Debian, Ivalinux, RockyLinux, and Gantu. And we said afterwards, contributions to our general OpenQA repository here on GitHub is of course welcome. Therefore, it is a good point that we start also a collaboration for OpenQA, that all enablements and test tweets are coming together. And every Linux distribution can use available tests. That should not be only for S390X. We want to have it also for x86 and other architectures with different finally should be Linux distribution specific stuff. Therefore, the needles with screenshots are different, perhaps, and perhaps distribution specific configurations. From that, we are coming to the topic, are there any problems during your development process for S390X? Because we want to be the point of contact for all Linux distributions, if anything, does not work on the mainframe during the process. Problems are affecting mostly all Linux distributions. And you as a developer also and not only one single person or one single Linux distribution. We are receiving fast support via our mailing list of the Linux distribution working group. We can produce, we build issues. Sometimes, we have got situations that only one Linux distribution is affected. But that is mostly based on the kernel version that Ubuntu, as an example, is using a special older kernel version. Or Ubuntu, the tambourine is using the latest kernel version. The same as Fedora is using another kernel version. That can happen, that something will break based on the kernel. But that will be also in our focus and we will support there. But mostly that should be on application level, everybody. The IBM Distinguished Engineer is responding on development problems when I have forwarded also upstream project issues where the developers didn't know how to enable the software for S390X. Anything small didn't work. I have forwarded and the fix was available within three hours. All were happy then. That is also possible. Therefore, if you know anything related to that, you can forward it to our mailing list with the WG Linux distros of the open mainframe project org. And afterwards, we are receiving solid solutions also for upstream, mostly within hours or some days. If you want to know something like that also for ARM, I know that Linaro, as an example, is providing such a mailing list for ARM-specific problems for all Linux distributions. Then we had an email discussion at OpenSuser about that and security related. There exists a mailing list for all Linux distributions. Therefore, you can find something for mostly all architectures already. Now you want to, I expect, you want to know how can I develop on our mainframe without having my own mainframe at home or in the company. Where you can find the Linux one open source of the community cloud and the Linux one community cloud, you can receive a IBM for 120 days for developer students and professors in the Linux one community cloud. You are creating your user account and you are receiving access. The account will be removed afterwards and recreation is possible. But the best case is you can receive also as an open source project long-term VM access in the Linux one open source of the community cloud. You can use this virtual machine request, write down any reason for what you want to use it. You can define which size of memory, CPU and everything as you need and when you can receive it. I, as an example, I have received C70Ms for development and hackathons for our OpenSuser C systems team. And the single thing what you need is any open source project as a reference. Now we are coming to the last slide. Finally, I can say collaboration. We can watch as a benefit. Upstream contributions are available for all. We are lowering the research and development costs. That's valid for IBM, the community, and every open source enterprise company. We are receiving the same solutions for all Linux distributions. We are sharing our knowledge between the communities and finally all are happy and are receiving the fixes faster. And then we are receiving diverse community ideas. Every Linux distribution has got another thinking, has got other ideas, and with that, you can increase all the innovation. And on this way, we can accelerate the Linux development for S390X. Now we have got some minutes left for questions. Yes, you can use QEMO already as an emulator, as an example. And there's also Hercules available, but IBM does not really support Hercules, I would say. But we have got, yeah, some people are laughing. I wrote my bachelor phases based on QEMO. IBM has got also a KVM team related to that, I can say. But if you want to develop and building stuff, I can really recommend these two links. If you want to use it only one time, you can use the 120 days version. If you are Fedora contributor of anything else, you can order for yourself via this link. The hint is that you can only choose between Ubuntu, Rel, and Slash as a foundation. Therefore, you have to choose one of them. And if you want to build on Fedora, you have to use KVM or something like that within it. Slash is possible that you can upgrade to OpenSUSE. We have got an effort that we can use Zipperdoop on OpenSUSE repositories, and we have got OpenSUSE in our VMs. I am working on it that I can receive IBM to the site where you want to support also community distributions that Fedora and Debian can be also integrated there. But it seems that it needs some time because that is not officially supported. Therefore, I can recommend using QEMO for S390X. And then you should have got a good emulator that has been improved within the last 10 years. That is the best choice related to emulators. They didn't like it very much, but my bachelor thesis was about something like that related. I should create container images, build it, and run it integrated into QEMO for emulations. And that was when a transfer from Cassandra as an example exported to Xphere. And then the emulated VM should start on X86. That was an interesting bachelor thesis project, I would say. You can see also my bachelor thesis under my name, krish-ed-slash-bachelor-phases on GitHub. But yes, we are working on it. It was not really wanted in the past, but IBM wants to become open source. Therefore, they have improved that. And this method is the method they want to provide open source projects who don't know anything about mainframes in the background of GitHub or something like that. IBM wants to receive enablements of open source projects that are not responsive for that. Therefore, any way it has to be enabled. And on the other side, they want to be responsible for the foundation, kernel development, KVM, network devices, and everything else. And therefore, you need a solution where you are supporting the application development on community side and stable foundation on IBM side. Nice.