I thought I’d write a quick post in regards to an article I just read on CNN.com.
To sum it up, despite the recent speculation about whether or not RedHat will survive with competition coming from the Microsoft/Novell partnership and Oracle’s attempt at taking some of RedHat’s market, it seems RedHat is still holding strong and doing alright. I know alot of people thought this could be the start of the end of RedHat, with strong competition coming from two huge companies. However I think RedHat is almost a defacto standard in Enterprise Linux. I don’t feel alot of companies are going to switch or abandon RedHat for another ‘Enterprise’ level Linux distro. Why would they? RedHat works, it’s well supported and has good pay support. Most companies that are looking to pay for Linux support already have RedHat contracts which meet their needs, why go jumping ship to a new Enterprise venture which has yet to prove whether or not it will be successfull?
RedHat is also one of the biggest contributors to the success of Linux, as well as kernel patches and various other applications. I fail to see Oracle or Microsoft contributing to Linux the same way RedHat does should either one become a serious contender in the Enterprise distribution market. It would be a big loss to the Linux community should RedHat no longer exist. Would Linux survive? Of course! It would be a huge setback though.
With all that said, I don’t want to come off as a RedHat fan boy. I’m actually a Mandriva Linux fanboy, if you must know 
However I do administer and develop on RedHat Linux at my day job. I have to admit, that while I don’t like the idea of paying for a Linux distribution, in the Enterprise workplace where companies want the comfort of using an OS which a big company stand behind and supports, RedHat is the answer. It just works.
