Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Red Hat Takes Aim at SuSE, Mandrake

Posted by michael on from the when-penguins-attack dept.

gowen writes "The gloves have come off in the competition between commercial linux distributions. The Register is reporting that Red Hat is offering a $10 rebate to people who upgrade to Red Hat 7.3, including those who previously used Mandrake and SuSE. Previous users of Windows are not eligible for a rebate."

3 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. great news by tps12 · · Score: -1, Troll
    Before modding me down based on the subject, please consider my ideas. I think you'll find that I'm actually in agreement with the greater geek community.

    Now, one thing that the Linux community has been battling for a while now is what exactly "Linux" is. We all know the answer: it is a kernel, or a microkernel to be more precise, which combined with the GNU macrokernel is an entire operating system. Add in X and you have a distro[bution]. Simple, really.

    But America doesn't get it. When you say Linux, they want to know the stock symbol and the CEO. I know we have all read Linus's great rant "The Cathedral and the Bizarre," but the fact is, when it comes to winning over the Windoze crowd, what we lack is a single representative for our movement. There is a lot of wasted effort as companies like Red Hat and Mandrake invest billions annually attempting to make Linux remotely usable for the average user. If one of these companies could be absorbed into the other, or just defeated in the market, then we'd see a much healthier Linux product that can finally compete with Windows.

    Again, apologies for not repeating the slashbot "party line," but I guess I will just have to take a chance with the karma.

    --

    Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
  2. No Windows Rebate No Surprise by hooded1 · · Score: 1, Troll

    Many people here on slashdot don't seem to understand that linux CANNOT compete with Windows on the desktop market. MS has been in this business for a long time. They have spent billions of dollars on research and public opinion polls. They know what the people want more than any linux distro does. The best linux can do is to copy them, steal their ideas. I imagine that the people at Redhat have realized this and thus aren't trying to go for the windows population, instead they go for people who they know already use linux.

    --
    A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
  3. Re:Downgrade from Mandrake to RedHat? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I see many people migrate from Linux to Windows, and they are just as fucking retarded.