Will Redhat Become a Division of AOL Time-Warner?

[Adam Myrow]

I can hear the advertising now.  "Redhat, so easy, no wonder it's number
1!"  They'll be showing a grandmother on TV saying "my grandson sends me
email every day and I can actually reply with AOL for Redhat."

In all seriousness, I don't think they could take out the command line.
After all, that's how Linux works.  They could make it start up in X, and
people wouldn't use the command line, but it's still in there.  Even
Windows XP has a command line if I understand it correctly.  I just think
it's funny that AOL is interested in Linux.

What this shows is what I've believed for a long time.  Linux is at a
critical point in its history.  It's powerful enough to run serious
servers, but it's starting to grab the attention of the public because
they are finally starting to get tired of Windows crashing and excepting
that this is not normal behavior for a computer.  So, they are looking to
Linux because it has a reputation for stability, but they see that it
isn't Windows at all.  They want Windows without the bugs, and the Linux
users want something other than Windows.  So, we have word processors
under the GUI, ICQ cloans and such under the GUI, and development tools
running at the command line.  Redhat is clearly trying to attract home
users with its Plug 'N Play type install while Slackware is staying with a
"do it yourself" approach and other distributions seem to be somewhere in
the middle.  Linux is going to go one way or the other.  It's really up to
the users to decide which way it goes.