For those that cant remember
A company called IBM runs a one stop shop, but got a little too big for its boots around the mid 80s, and they have suffered for it ever since. They ended up playing second fiddle to a company from Seattle. Bet they wish Gary had been home when they called !
Robert Heller does a wonderful description of it in "The Fate of IBM".
The real problem they face, if M$ are their target, is that Windows looks nice. Whatever M$ may do elsewhere they put a lot of work into their user interface and it shows. Everything comes second to good looks. If M$ paid as much attention to the functional parts of their systems, then it is Oracle that will be having problems.
So, Oracle are going to try to create a one stop shop for themselves. This is an area where they have no experience, and without significant enhancement of the user interface, an area in which they will fail. Just taking a distribution at random, OK, RH probably isn't a random choice, still leaves them dependent on an OS supplier. If this damages RH in the process, this will be another classic case of shooting oneself in the foot. RH are not the problem, they are part of the solution !
Thin clients will not succeed either. When a functional PC costs as little as £299, inc VAT, who cares about the cost. When a laptop can be had for nothing, sign up with Orange for £15/month broadband, get a free laptop, who cares about cost.
There is one and only one problem that is faced by M$ competitors and that is the GUI, plain and simple. Once you have the good looks of Windows, the superior internals of Linux et al will have a serious chance of success. Until then, it is merely bickering in the playground.