Linux company Red Hat has announced that it will abandon consumer desktop Linux distributions:

We have no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the consumer market in the foreseeable future. An explanation: as a public, for-profit company, Red Hat must create products and technologies with an eye on the bottom line, and with desktops this is much harder to do than with servers, Red Hat said on its website.

In its announcement, Red Hat alludes that Microsoft's quasi-monopoly over desktop systems is hard to beat. Linux commands only about 1.2 percent of the desktop market in the U.S., research group Gartner has found. However, its Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop will still be available at least through next year.

"We are focused on infrastructure software for the enterprise market, and to that market we are offering the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop," said Michael Chen, vice-president of corporate marketing at Red Hat, as quoted by PC World. "You need a different support ecosystem and applications for the consumer desktop," Chen added.

Last month, Red Hat announced the acquisition of Amentra, a provider of systems integration services for SOA, business process management, systems development and enterprise data solutions. Amentra has over 140 employees in locations including Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Charlotte, Tampa and Richmond.

In a press statement, Red Hat said Amentra has vast technology and product expertise, including with JBoss middleware and the acquisition provides a solution-oriented depth to the JBoss middleware business. The newly acquired-company will operate as an independent Red Hat company.