I can hear the advertising now. "Redhat, so easy, no wonder it's number 1!" They'll be showing a grandmother on TV saying "my grandson sends me email every day and I can actually reply with AOL for Redhat." In all seriousness, I don't think they could take out the command line. After all, that's how Linux works. They could make it start up in X, and people wouldn't use the command line, but it's still in there. Even Windows XP has a command line if I understand it correctly. I just think it's funny that AOL is interested in Linux. What this shows is what I've believed for a long time. Linux is at a critical point in its history. It's powerful enough to run serious servers, but it's starting to grab the attention of the public because they are finally starting to get tired of Windows crashing and excepting that this is not normal behavior for a computer. So, they are looking to Linux because it has a reputation for stability, but they see that it isn't Windows at all. They want Windows without the bugs, and the Linux users want something other than Windows. So, we have word processors under the GUI, ICQ cloans and such under the GUI, and development tools running at the command line. Redhat is clearly trying to attract home users with its Plug 'N Play type install while Slackware is staying with a "do it yourself" approach and other distributions seem to be somewhere in the middle. Linux is going to go one way or the other. It's really up to the users to decide which way it goes.
