Start-Up and Industry Veteran With More Than 20 Years of Experience Joins the Market Leader of Linux Solutions.

DURHAM, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 22, 1999--

Red Hat(R) Software, Inc., the leading developer and support provider of the Linux operating system, today named Tim Buckley senior vice president and Chief Operating Officer (COO). Buckley, formerly Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Seattle-based Visio Corp. (Nasdaq: VSIO), brings more than 20 years of emerging technology company experience to the rapidly-growing Red Hat.

Buckley was instrumental in building some of the most successful start-ups in the computing industry, including Aldus, the company that created PageMaker, and Approach, a PC database company that was later sold to Lotus Development Corp. Buckley joined Visio in 1993 and was instrumental in increasing company revenues from start-up to a consensus estimated $215 million in fiscal 1999.

"Tim brings tremendous experience with emerging companies that will help Red Hat to effectively handle the growth and demand for Red Hat Linux offerings," said Bob Young, president and CEO of Red Hat Software, Inc. "His insight will help Red Hat continue accelerating the adoption of Linux and the expansion of our business, service and support operations."

"Red Hat is an opportunity to help remake the software industry and to provide computer users with the benefits of open source software," said Buckley. "Red Hat has become the market leader by providing real value to their customers through an exciting new approach to software development and support. I am excited by the opportunity to fundamentally change the landscape of the computing industry."

Recent Linux Momentum

IDC research states that Linux was the fastest-growing server operating environment in 1998, growing more than 212 percent in that year alone and capturing more than 17 percent of all server operating system shipments. Red Hat's extensive alliances with industry leaders during the past year and the overwhelming demand for Linux-based applications by more than 10 million Linux users has created support from the industry's leading software and hardware manufacturers, including Compaq(R), Computer Associates, Corel, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Netscape, Novell, Oracle(R) and SAP(R). Linux runs on Intel, Alpha and Sun SPARC platforms and will soon run on PowerPC systems.

About Red Hat Software

Founded in 1994, Red Hat Software is based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., where it is a leader in the development of open source operating software solutions. Red Hat Development builds the most accessible and advanced operating system available anywhere with technical innovations such as RPM and the disk druid installation tool. Red Hat Linux is available for Intel, Compaq Alpha, and Sun SPARC platforms.

Red Hat Linux was named InfoWorld's Product of the Year for three years in a row, was given a Productivity accolade in Software Development's Jolt Awards, was named an Environment/Desktop finalist in the Ziff-Davis European Excellence Awards, won the editor's choice awards from the Linux Journal and Australian Personal Computing magazines, and won the "Just Plain Cool" award from Australian Personal Computing magazine. At March's LinuxWorld Expo, more than 8,000 members of the Linux community voted Red Hat a "LinuxWorld Favorite."

LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat Software, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.