A decision by SGI to release new software features to bring enterprise capabilities to the Linux operating system is a "welcome move" for the open source community, according to a Linux enthusiast.

SGI this week announced a series of new performance technology tools for the open source community to solve problem bugs in enterprise Linux applications.

The features are the result of ongoing work with database companies to ensure Linux has suitable features for the enterprise and database world, Paul Rushton, director of marketing, SGI Australia said.

"We've been doing what we think needs doing in order to improve the performance and robustness of Linux for database work," Rushton said.

In addition to developing features, Rushton said SGI has made a commitment to the open source community and Linux.

"We believe there is a strong demand, but if there isn't the interest and it doesn't makes the approval of Linus, we'll throw it out.

"We're not about to produce another variant of Linux. There are no proprietary flavours of it," he said.

Jamie Honan, president of the Sydney Linux User Group said the announcement is "proof of SGI's willingness to contribute and engage with the open source community and in particular with Linux developments".

Honan was also pleased with SGI's approach to the open source community.

"SGI has made a commitment not to promote technologies that will tend to fragment Linux development efforts . . .SGI will not make its own SGI Linux," Honan said.

"SGI has learnt the lesson that different incompatibilities introduced by each Unix vendor has harmed the overall takeup of Unix," Honan said, referring to previous fragmentations of Unix.

New features developed by SGI include:

Parallelisation of the I/O path

POSIX-compliant asynchronous I/O interfacesDirect access to disksLinux kernel crash dumpBuilt-in kernel debuggerPerformance analysis tools