That's the story being reported by Hinesh Jethwani from Mumbai in CXO Today.

"Red Hat’s monopolistic hold on the Indian market, which has made the brand almost a synonym of sorts to the word ‘Linux’, is all set to change with the entrance of new flavors into the Open Source market," writes Jethwani.

The company introducing Red Flag is Chennai-based Altosys Software Technologies Limited. The report quotes Altosys's L. Ramesh, business manager for Linux:

"Red Flag will offer a complete range of Linux solutions starting from desktops to high end servers. All versions are currently in Chinese, and we're working on the English customization, for distribution in India.”

Ramesh goes on to explain that Red Hat, by its early entry into the Indian market, has gained a substantial market share, but that Altosys calculates what RH has got is a share of a still-emerging market.

"Linux is in fact gaining popularity and acceptance only now. So the market would actually grow at a greater pace than now and we intend to capitalize on the same," Ramesh adds.

"We would focus on providing user friendly Linux solutions at much more competitive prices," he continues. "Most important of all we would concentrate on after sales support. In fact, this would be the single largest parameter that would soon determine the leader in the Indian market and we are very hopeful that we would make substantial in roads with our support network. Our target is to capture 15% to 20% of the Linux market in the coming financial year."

Ramesh explains the difference between Red Flag and other flavors of Linux thus:

"The base kernel is the same. There's not much any one can do to that. It is the additional packages and the applications that would play a major difference. First and foremost we would give much wider hardware support and Easy GUI based installation."

His company will hopefully be bundling the software with various vendors, he explains. Altosys is speaking with vendors like LG, HCL, IBM, HP, Acer, and Samsung.

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