In a major strategy shift, Sun Microsystems Inc. officials said it will stop offering its own customized version of Linux and will instead turn to several other standard Linux distributions.

"Yes, this is a change in strategy. Our Sun Linux distribution is essentially Red Hat Linux with a few minor tweaks," John Loiacono, vice president of Sun's operating platforms group, told reporters at a "town hall" meeting in San Francisco Friday morning. "But our customers told us they didn't want a standard distribution that had some tweaks, so I decided to fix the problem by simply supporting between two and four standard Linux distributions, though I have not as yet decided which these will be."

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