Sun Microsystems initiated a warmer stage in its relationship with Red Hat on Monday, making conspicuous room onstage for the rival at a major server product launch.

Sun prefers customers to use its Solaris operating system, which chiefly runs on Sun servers using UltraSparc processors. And as Sun launches its "Galaxy" line of x86 servers, the company is aggressively trying to build support for the Unix variant on computers with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices processors as well.

But Sun is being more accommodating toward Linux again--specifically, to Red Hat, whose Enterprise Linux product dominates the Linux market. Sun extended its Red Hat support contract to the new Galaxy servers and invited Red Hat to share some of its spotlight, along with partners Oracle, MySQL and Advanced Micro Devices.

"Stay tuned on the Red Hat-Sun relationship," Sun President Jonathan Schwartz said at the Galaxy launch event in New York. "We think there's ample opportunity to work together out there."

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