Submitted by: kirkland on Wednesday October 25th, 2006 at 09:29 PM EST

Oracle Corp. is taking aim at Red Hat Inc., the top distributor of Linux operating system software, with an offer to provide half-price technical support to Red Hat Linux users.

Speaking at the company's annual user conference on Wednesday, Chairman and Chief Executive Larry Ellison said Oracle was seeking to solve key problems that have held back the development of Linux among big corporate customers.

"Oracle is announcing full support for Red Hat Linux," Ellison told the OracleWorld conference in San Francisco. "The goal is to enhance and speed the adoption of Linux."

Ellison said Oracle was targeting corporate customers who rely on Red Hat Linux as the operating system to run their core business applications, but choose to pay Oracle to provide Linux technical support and maintenance.

» Full story @ Washington Post