Microsoft to buy Red Hat ?

"Various news sources including ZDnet are today reporting that Microsoft is considering buying out Red Hat, speculating that 'Microsoft could see Red Hat's acquisition as a nice way to undermine IBM, but might not consider that a sufficient reason to do it,' adding that Red Hat is however '...a company that wants to be Microsoft and, like Microsoft, makes its living packaging and selling other people's ideas.'"

Source: Slashdot

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Short update and context (for anyone who stumbles onto this old thread): the mid‑2000s rumours that Microsoft would buy Red Hat never came to pass. IBM announced an agreement to acquire Red Hat on October 28, 2018, and the transaction closed on July 9, 2019 for about $34 billion; the companies’ press materials lay out the timeline and terms.
IBM / Red Hat announcement (Oct 28, 2018)
Red Hat / IBM closing (July 9, 2019). (redhat.com)

A few points that tie back to posts in this thread: was right that stories like this pop up repeatedly; ’s request for updates is exactly why it helps to check official filings. The Microsoft–Novell interoperability agreement of November 2006 was real and publicly announced by Microsoft; Novell later agreed to be acquired by The Attachmate Group (announced Nov 22, 2010) with the deal completing April 27, 2011. Those releases provide the documented sequence of events for SUSE/Novell.
Microsoft–Novell announcement (Nov 2006)
Novell / Attachmate announcement (Nov 22, 2010) — completion reported Apr 27, 2011. (news.microsoft.com)

Clarifying takeaway (ties to the technical side of the thread): corporate rumors are common; for a reliable history rely on official press releases, SEC filings and major business coverage. On the package-manager discussion raised by , and others — modern distro tooling (dnf/yum, apt, packagekit and GUI front ends) has narrowed the usability gap between RPM and DEB ecosystems, so choosing a distro with the desired desktop polish and repo support is a practical fix rather than chasing acquisition headlines.

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Wow, leave it to Slashdot to use the most biased description possible. ;)

Seems kinda weird. Do you have any updated info on this?

I thought red hat was doing something with hp

The ironic thing is that if MS made a linux distro it would help get it onto the desktop at last lol

MS should do that then. That way we can actually start getting more people into. Why in the heck is it so hard to install rpm's in linux? why can't the developers just make an executable file for the program? if linux was easier that way, i would still be using it.

RPM's? Use an updater. ;)

If MS does linux, their distro will be another advertising platform with all the necessary security breeches for the corporations to invade your privacy. Something you agree to already on windows when you click the EULA to download digital media.

They try to reinvent things all the time and ruin them for the most part anyway. Remember the sun microsoft thing? Java and Javascript?

As for crusing IBM? No way. MS can't do an OS as well as IBm yet. No way no how. They can't get in the data centers IBM is in. I don's see it.

Anyway, I bet they want their hands on it to undermine it. That's my opinion.

well, MS ripps everybody off. there's a lot of similarities between vista and mac os x. they copied the 3d windows from SLED 10, they copied apple's interface, they just steal things from everyone.

whoever hates rpms have u tried debian

go to console
apt-get update
apt-get install xxxxxxxxxxxxx

its installled and so is evrything it requires, all from the net!

whoever hates rpms have u tried debian

go to console
apt-get update
apt-get install xxxxxxxxxxxxx

its installled and so is evrything it requires, all from the net!

rpm is more the equivilent of debian's dpkg

redhat (and fedora) both use a apt-get like system called yum; so in the same way on debian you use

sudo apt-get install abiword

on redhat you can use

su 
yum install abiword

I dunno why I'm posting in this thread cos MS would never buy RH.

wouldnt it be good if RH, SUse and Mandriva all got combined into a super distro

Speaking of which does anyone know of a free version of SLED?
I mean, RHEL has CentOS - what does SLED have?

I think microsoft is gonna buy SuSE off novell cos its everything they like, Slow, Bloated, Costly and Broken

:)

Anyone else find it weird we've seen articles like this, about once a year for the last 3 years. And each time, it never happens?

I don't think Redhat would sell to Microsoft, they are doing good the way they are :)

nivell just signed a deal woth M$ about SuSE

Novell has been making software for microsoft products for years now, that deal really did surprise me though :)

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