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Hint: The rest of the world already works like that. See: zOS on Power, Solaris on Sparc, HP/Tandem Nonstops (I think are now on x86), IBM i on whatever it runs on, HPUX on x86 (I think), AIX on Power, Linux on Mainframe, Windows NT4, XP, 2000, 2003, 2008 (all running critical tasks)...

Cheap Linux/x86 servers own most of the web space. But the rest of the world runs much more heterogeneously. (And that list above ignores real legacy stuff.. You can buy all of that currently (with the exception of the older windows stuff))

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I don't think it's just the web space. Maybe academia's different, but over the past 10 years, a lot of infrastructure we used to use Solaris/Sparc for (and miscellaneous other more exotic things) has all been transitioned to a mix of Linux/x86 and Windows Server/x86--- email servers, compute clusters, payroll, course registration, pretty much everything.

Oh I agree - the general trend is in the direction of win/linux on x86. But it feels like the web world has gone almost exclusively x86. Maybe it's just the web got their quicker -- but acting like linux on ARM is revolutionary is perhaps overdone. (Especially considering Linux runs on x86, x86-64, IA64, PowerPC, Mainframe, Cell, and probably some other processors that are used in datacenters)

The list of supported Linux architectures (form kernel.org):

Although originally developed first for 32-bit x86-based PCs (386 or higher), today Linux also runs on (at least) the Alpha AXP, Sun SPARC, Motorola 68000, PowerPC, ARM, Hitachi SuperH, IBM S/390, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64, AMD x86-64, AXIS CRIS, Renesas M32R, Atmel AVR32, Renesas H8/300, NEC V850, Tensilica Xtensa, and Analog Devices Blackfin architectures; for many of these architectures in both 32- and 64-bit variants.

We could also say: pretty much everything under the sun.

Cheap Linux/x86 servers own most of the web space.

oh, and supercomputers: http://www.top500.org/stats/list/35/osfam

We're running HP-UX on PA-RISC and AIX on RS64. Don't know whether you can buy these architectures still, but these are real production machines in a datacentre.

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