There’s been some discussion on various news websites and blogs about what Red Hat will do thanks to the Novell-Microsoft ‘covenant’. I discussed my take on things with my previous post on the subject. Now that I’ve had a chance to catch up on my reading on the ‘covenant’ I’ve come to another conclusion…Red Hat will do 1 of 2 things.
- Nothing
- Buy Novell
I read some interesting thoughts on the ‘deal’ and even some speculation that Red Hat might have to approach Microsoft to seek indemnification in a similar fashion as Novell did this past week. I think that this is reaching a bit. Red Hat already has indemnification built into their license. Red Hat is comfortable right now posting huge numbers and enjoying the success it deserves. Why it would want to bring itself to Microsoft’s doorstep is beyond me. I see Red Hat doing absolutely nothing about this…business as usual.
But what if Red Hat bought Novell? THAT would be something unexpected…and it would be a major thorn in Microsoft’s side because they’d have to honor their ‘covenant’ with SuSe Linux. Well, ok, they don’t have to honor it…but if they want to look like a good company they would.
Think about it…Sun was actually considering buying Novell not long ago…or there was speculation they were. Oracle has looked at buying Novell. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see Red Hat swoop in and buy Novell?
Think about it…SuSe is the #2 player for Commercial Linux. What would Microsoft do? They wouldn’t play tiddly-winks with #2 now would they? Nope. They’d snap up that company and move forward churning profits. I think Red Hat buying Novell would be a Novel idea (pun intended).
There’s been quite a few postings and articles on new users and Linux flourishing during the past year. The reason I believe this to be is that desktop Linux is approaching or has arrived at the tipping point where it can gain mainstream adoption. People are seeing Linux as a viable alternative to Microsoft. My wife recently had me nuke the dual boot computer and go with Linux due to Windows Media Player 11 restrictions set to come out when it is released. Her main concern is being told by companies how she should be able to listen to her music after she’s bought it…kinda like buying a car and the dealer tells you where you can drive it and how you can. She’s in the process of converting all her mp3’s to ogg’s to 1) save space and 2) because they sound better and are in a free format. Thus far, she’s not missing Windows.
If you’re like me, you change things constantly in your linux desktop. I’m always entering in and tweaking .conf files to see what I can do and where the limits of things might be. In my attempt yesterday to get my EXACT monitor supported in PCLinuxOS, I hosed my xorg.conf file which is where all the Xsession settings (or Xwindows session) are stored (like mouse, keyboard, monitor, and graphics driver settings). Since I hosed this up, my graphical user interface and window manager would not start. So I was dropped to login via the shell. This might be daunting for some new users in Linux so I figured I’d write up this little how-to that would get them back on their feet.
Some of you may remember a 