In his keynote address at the company's Red Hat Summit in Nashville, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik also announced a new Web-based community for open-source developers who are looking for collaborators as well as input from engineers at the Raleigh, N.C., company.

Red Hat also said it is developing an open-source entertainment Web site that lets users easily share their reading and music preferences with other Internet users. Regarding theOne Laptop per Child project, which is aimed at children in Third World countries and of which Red Hat is a key supporter, the company said it is making progress shrinking its flavor of Linux to run within the tight constraints of the US$100 notebook computer.

Although the company is better known as a provider of software for corporate server computers, Szulik said these latter two initiatives harmonized with the company's long-standing goal of "democratizing content."

"We're thinking less about brand than about reputation capital," he said. "We hope this is what you would want and expect out of a modern enterprise."

The software for testing graphical applications running on Linux is called Dogtail. Red Hat is also releasing scripts the company has developed in-house for testing applications.