AOL in talks to buy Red Hat.

MrLuigi · January 19th, 2002, 04:40 PM

Article in LA Times 1/19/2002
By Alec Klein
AOL, Time Warner in talks to buy Red Hat inc. Geesh can you imagine....a AOL Linux CD on every door step with free 1000 hours and no credit card needed?!

Xeroid · January 19th, 2002, 04:46 PM

I just read the article. Scary ain't it?

Mike

voogru · January 19th, 2002, 04:48 PM

Use Red Hat Linux! With AOL Pre-Installed! 10,000 Hours FREE*

10,000 hours later...

Error: In Order to use Red Hat Linux you must first purchase a subscription to AOL Time Warner Internet Service Provider. When you purchase your 12 month Contract you can then use Red Hat linux for free just for signing up!

yay now to use red hat i have to pay for aol service Hip Hip HORROAY!

newbie~wan · January 19th, 2002, 04:49 PM

I think being associated w/ AOL would probably spoil the spirit of it. Who knows, could be a good financial backing though to allow accelerated development.

AOL is in competition w/ MS isnt it? I'll bet they'd love it if people would stop using windows. Unfortunately, I dont think linux is ready to be on the desktop of the masses. The directory structure does not have intuitive directory names and many people would be screwed the first little problem that came along.

Xeroid · January 19th, 2002, 04:51 PM

The link to the article that I read (in case anyone has't seen it).
MSNBC.com

Mike

EDIT: link fixed

storm2k · January 19th, 2002, 06:03 PM

article at cnet

so this is how microsoft wins the operating system wars in the end...

"linux? what's that? don't you mean aol?"

JimG · January 19th, 2002, 06:14 PM

Quote:

To counter Microsoft, AOL could couple its Internet service with Red Hat's operating system technology and could be configured to override Windows while launching a version of Linux, sources told the newspaper.

Ok, how can they actually do this? In order to make this work, first off, unless you convert Linux to FAT32 or NTFS, it will need it's own partition because it's based on ext2 or another file system. Then, if it doesn't kill Windows completely when AOL tries to launch with linux, how are you going to get your downloaded files? If you're using a Linux based AOL, it's going to dl to a Linux folder somewhere. Unless you can find a way to mount the windows partition, it can't be written to. And if you exit AOL, you can't see your files saved on the linux partition.
I think the folks at AOL should realize they've got a good thing going with AOL as it is (yeah, i know it's not a great service, but for people just starting out, it's not bad). They should just stick with Windows based code. If the majority of people who use AOL aren't that computer literate, by going with Linux based AOL, AOL's going to engineer its own downfall.

brandon184 · January 19th, 2002, 06:20 PM

AOL to purchase Red Hat?!?!!!!!!!???????????

Ughhhhhhhhh...

vass0922 · January 19th, 2002, 06:48 PM

Well I guess it could be viewed in several ways...

Either AOL is going to buy them out, to slowly wipe them out to help bring people back to windows so they dont have to develop aol for another platform? (LOL yeah ok)

AOL Could soak a LOT of money into linux to try to bring it to the desktop more to bring users from windows to linux and therefore not have MSN.

AOL could just see it as something else to just kinda keep going JUST ENOUGH to bring people on board and soak up the profits

PresterJohn · January 19th, 2002, 06:53 PM

who would have guessed a year ago that time warner aol would be the sole 'knight in shining armor' to battle the dragon called micro$oft.

i dunno if aol packaged w/linux would be enough to make windows users switch, but it should at least, make microsoft work harder to improve their products...