Oracle's decision to trigger a Linux turf war has thus far produced the exact results Larry Ellison desired. Red Hat investors freaked out, and Red Hat customers gained a new avenue for putting pricing pressure on their Linux supplier. Despite such concrete turns in the Linux market, Oracle's support plan continues to be more bluster than muster, according to Mark Shuttleworth, whose company Canonical oversees Ubuntu Linux.

Oracle's new Linux is the best thing that ever happened to the open source applications market. Especially in the enterprise space.

And, no, they're not going to fork it. Instead they're going to provide competition, with lower support prices and faster updates. Which is good for everyone.

Larry Ellison knew Oracle needed its own operating system, and the Redwood Shores software company had a choice: Build it or buy it. But Ellison told attendees at last week's Oracle's OpenWorld conference that he'd found a third way -- take an operating system from another business.

Oracle today dished out a rude awakening to the Linux users it hopes to support over the long-haul. Its MetaLink support site crashed.

"Oracle Metalink (support website) has been virtually unusable all day," wrote in one Reg reader.

Linux vendor Red Hat Inc saw over $1bn wiped from its market capitalization in early trading after Oracle Corp announced that it was going to offer a Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone, leaving the company open to a potential takeover bid.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison fired a broadside at Red Hat on Wednesday. But now that some of the smoke has cleared, it appears some cannonballs went wide of the mark.