News Flash – COBOL Rises from Its Own Non-Ashes
Welcome
Of all the strange news this month, the one item that really caught my eye was the announcement of IBM's COBOL for Linux 1.1 compiler. I guess most of us are aware that millions of lines of business software around the world are still written in COBOL, and for that reason, old-school COBOL programmers still have work. But think about this for a minute: COBOL has existed for 62 years, the x86 architecture has been around for 43 years, and Linux has been with us for 30 years.
Dear Reader,
Of all the strange news this month, the one item that really caught my eye was the announcement of IBM's COBOL for Linux 1.1 compiler. I guess most of us are aware that millions of lines of business software around the world are still written in COBOL, and for that reason, old-school COBOL programmers still have work. But think about this for a minute: COBOL has existed for 62 years, the x86 architecture has been around for 43 years, and Linux has been with us for 30 years. Yet at this late date, the (97-year-old) IBM steps up now to announce a Linux COBOL compiler for the x86?
It is easy to see why IBM, whose clients include many old-school companies running old-school software, would continue to maintain their COBOL compilers. But a new compiler for x86 Linux? That's not just maintaining – that's investing!
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.