Linux Ready For Real Time on Wall Street? (InternetNews.com)

Linux Ready For Real Time on Wall Street? (InternetNews.com)

I think the biggest obstacle isn't whether or not trading apps can run on Linux, but the way that the Linux 'community' and ISVs interact.

ISVs serving the financial markets for markket data etc are accustomed to delivering binaries with support on just a few systems. And customers are accustomed to buying that service (not a 'send us the source and we'll build it' service with T&M support when things go wrong in local context). And that means that you get into the usual hassle of trying to find the vendor and release version that:
- is locally acceptable to sysadmins etc
- is validated by the hardware vendor
- is common to all the ISV products

It remains to be seen whether Solaris-on-AMD (and the Rock chip) will make a hearts-and-minds recovery here. There's nothing interesting in Linux per se vis a vis Solaris for a broker - its just a question of what the ISVs support and how fast the supported hardware is.