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At the time, most of us thought Oracle undercutting Red Hats Linux business with its Unbreakable Linux was a big deal. Would customers flock to Oracles cut-rate version of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux)? Would Red Hat be pounded by Larry Ellisons minions?
After a few months, the answers appear to be: No, it wasnt a big deal; and no; and no.
I was reminded of Oracles move into Linux this week when I started getting calls from financial analysis firms. They wanted to know if I, as someone who follows Linux closely, had heard of any company actually using or trying out Oracles Unbreakable Linux in a pilot program.
My answer? No. I didnt know of a single company that was even testing Unbreakable Linux seriously, much less deploying it in a trial program.
It turns out that the analysts who called me didnt know of any businesses taking Unbreakable Linux seriously, either. So, we agreed to check into it further and compare notes if we found anyone.
We didnt find anyone.
Maybe this isnt too surprising. Both before, and after, Oracles move into Linux, I said Oracle getting into the Linux distribution business was dumb. It turns out a lot of people seem to agree with me.