VA buys two more Linux firms

Linux upstart VA Linux Systems of Sunnyvale continued its corporate buying spree by shelling out another $239 million in cash and stock to buy two more companies to widen its product offerings. VA Linux said it agreed to pay $200 million in cash and stock for San Diego-based TruSolutions, which designs Linux-based server computers. It will also pay about $39 million for Santa Clara-based NetAttach, which has developed a Linux technology for storage devices.

VA Linux is trying to reach critical mass in the market for Linux servers as the company it aggressively pitting its Linux-based servers against machines running the new Windows 2000 network operating system. Just this January VA agreed to buy Andover.Net Inc., whose Web sites offer news and forums for Linux programmers for nearly $1 billion. Meanwhile VA’s stock is quickly coming down to earth. After reaching $350 on its first trading day last fall, VA’s shares fell to $99 on Wednesday. Most Linux shares have shown a similar downward trend in recent weeks.