AOL to purchase RedHat Linux?!!!

[chemistry_geek]

Slashdot has an article here:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...15&mode=thread

about AOL purchasing RedHat Linux. Seems Apple was the great experiment again as AOL seems to be moving towards a UNIX variant operating system. AOL CD's just became more valuable. This can only be good news for several reasons:

1. AOL is the largest ISP in the world. This can remove the M$ monopoly if AOL can bring all that Linux has to offer (AbiWord, Gnumeric, StarOffice) for free.

2. Geeks will be pleased that they can go to mom's house and muck around with Linux on mom's computer.

3. More cool Linux apps running on OS X.

4. If AOL can convince the masses, and this shouldn't be too hard, that usng THEIR operating system and software will be better, and certainly more secure than Microsofts operating system, then this could force M$ to lower their prices and improve, or die.

5. People already know RedHat Linux has been in the news lately. I think IBM uses it with a few of their mainframes, so people know it is a good OS, AOL just needs to make the interface easy to use, like Apple did with OS X.

6. This is good news, I'm SO happy.

[some funky AOL sound] "You've Got Linux!"

[buggs1a]

possible bad for apple cus linux is free and if aol did buy red hat and turn it into easy to use etc, people would buy pc hardware and not mac. don't you think that's a good possibility? i would like it, only cus it may and a huge may take away some from microsoft but i don't think MS can ever be gone or anything. it would take 3-5 years for aol to turn red hat linux into something everyone can use. by then MS will get their hands into linux possibly and try to kill aol/linux. or other nasty things.

In my opinion the one main thing to help boost apple sales is games. and a bit faster/cheaper hardware. gotta get to 1.6-2ghz asap but i dont see that for years. 2ghz etc. pcs will always be double the clock and that's what average joe shmo looks at.
But get the gaqmes and people will come. the one thing that the pc has is games. i have a pc cus of games. if the mac played the same ones i did and as good i would not touch pc. i also own a mac for the other reasons like burning audio cd's and stuff.

[Jayem]

Originally posted by buggs1a
possible bad for apple cus linux is free and if aol did buy red hat and turn it into easy to use etc, people would buy pc hardware and not mac. don't you think that's a good possibility? i would like it, only cus it may and a huge may take away some from microsoft but i don't think MS can ever be gone or anything. it would take 3-5 years for aol to turn red hat linux into something everyone can use. by then MS will get their hands into linux possibly and try to kill aol/linux. or other nasty things.

In my opinion the one main thing to help boost apple sales is games. and a bit faster/cheaper hardware. gotta get to 1.6-2ghz asap but i dont see that for years. 2ghz etc. pcs will always be double the clock and that's what average joe shmo looks at.
But get the gaqmes and people will come. the one thing that the pc has is games. i have a pc cus of games. if the mac played the same ones i did and as good i would not touch pc. i also own a mac for the other reasons like burning audio cd's and stuff.

HAHAHAHAHAH! AOL GIVE SOMETHING AWAY??? FREE ISNT IN STEVE CASE'S VOCABULARY

If they do decide to buy out RedHat, they will use it as a nogotiating tool to strike gold-mine deals with M$. Simple as that. They wont ever try to push Linux into the world. They would actually have to do some work and creat a whole new version of AOL. And we all know how great they are at doing that! ( 3 years still on 5.0 )

[.dev.lqd]

Considering AOL's purchase of netscape and the lack of rammifications that had... I don't really care too much about this. AOL seems more interested in consolidation and aquisition rather than having a definite strategy.

'Hey- can we buy you?'
'Uhhh... sure...'
'OK'

Palm better watch its ass

[Jadey]

Linux has to be free, even if Mr. Case disagrees. It's part of linux's license. Red Hat can (and do) sell their distro of linux on CD as well, but they have to make it available for download at no charge.

[Jadey]

Don't you wish you could at least rely on a paper like the Washington Post not to be a rumour mill?

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-819578.html

[tagliatelle]

I don't know if they are merging or not, but they are doubtfull on it.

[AdmiralAK]

AOL buying linux ?
hmmm -- if they can make linux as addictive and dummy proof as AOL -- M$ stands no chance