Open Source Blog

Unbreakable Linux was downloaded 9,000 times in the first 30 days, according to Oracle’s president Chuck Phillips. Compare this with the download rates for Red Hat and Novell, however, and it is almost insignificant.

Novell enjoyed 325,000 downloads of its SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution in its first 28 days, according to my ComputerWire colleague, Timothy Prickett Morgan, while Fedora Core project leader, Max Spevack, told Internet News in November that Fedora Core 6 was looking at an average of 12,500 installations per day in its first few weeks (which is actually a much more meaningful number than downloads).

It doesn’t look good for Oracle. Red Hat’s decent third quarter financial figures suggested that Unbreakable Linux has had little to no short-term impact on the Linux market leader, and if these statistics are correct - and you consider the likelihood that the first 30 days were likely to be the peak of interest in Oracle’s newly announced alternative - the long-term impact is also likely to be negligible.

Incidentally, Red Hat’s shares are now trading above the level they were before Ellison made his announcement, so if acquiring the Linux distributor at a rock-bottom price is his plan, then expect a few more announcements in the New Year.