Back in September 2003, when Red Hat discontinued its home-oriented Red Hat Linux desktop and offloaded that market to the community-driven but Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Project, many people were left wondering if Red Hat would ever again offer a product aimed at home desktops. We have the answer now.
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2006-08-12
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That really sounds like a good long term business plan, the old Global Desktop announcement says:
"To address the demand for Linux on desktop systems by our customers in emerging markets, Intel and Red Hat worked together to deliver a pre-certified, cost-effective solution for Intel's reseller channel to extend their business value"
looks like the battle will be on machines preloaded with it. The traditional desktop is changing, people now use more mobile devices (smartphones, laptops, subnotebook like the Eee PC). I know!! I know!! I am not predicting the death of the PC again :-). We need computers more than when the PC was born, and the traditional PC does not fit that model
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Actually, I think this case has more to do with simple economics. Businesses roll out tens or hundreds of servers, with relatively high subscription fees. If support is needed for one server, there is a pretty wide margin to back it up. Even if you have many customers that only buy few licenses.
The consumer PC market is pretty much the opposite. Consumers are barely willing to shelve out 50 Euros. Subtract the development costs, and support costs, and there is nearly no profit margin to speak of. One support request from a consumer could blow away the profit margin for one or a few sales. Additionally, consumers are usually far less experienced with GNU/Linux systems than system administrators, so there is a higher probability that they will use customer support. Red Hat is a company, they want to make a profit, there is no profit here.
Some people argue that having some foothold in the (professional) desktop market tends to get a system onto servers. This is certainly true, Red Hat started with selling boxed GNU/Linux, and it probably helped them tremendously getting into the server market. But these days, there already is that free as in beer and freedom flavor, namely CentOS.
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2005-07-06
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Open Message to all of Red Hat people :
Don't block the others who try , shut up on the subject , "your it's not ready for personnal computers" or "History is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled or are run as charities." when your not even trying is undermining those who are ready and doing the job.
Apple don't seem to be doing too badly on that segment this days ... Novell , Mandriva , Ubuntu , Xandros , Linspire , Etc ...
Also don't try and claim that you really tried ... a company worth 3 Billion plus ( that is almost 4 billion ) can do a lot more then what you did. You bought and paid for server and workstation products at the expense of the personnal desktop solution who was the one who started it all for Red Hat.
Fedora need to distance itself completely from Red Hat on this.
7 days from Ubuntu next release too , yes right , that's so not intentionnal as to not grab the press attention ... cynical here.
- Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
Thomas A. Edison
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Normally I steer clear of conspiracy theories, but the timing does seem exceptionally poor. Prior to this, the press (include many mainstream) we all abuzz about the upcoming Ubuntu LTS release. Today, I see this RedHat "wet blanket" story making the rounds. Seems like it could be a bit of an attempt to take the edge off of Canonical's release. Hopefully, it was not on purpose.
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It's not. One of Red Hat's favorite slogans is "A rising tide lifts all boats". They know who the enemy is. And it's not Canonical, Sun, or Apple. A successful Ubuntu is good for Red Hat's business. However, they are quite content to let Shuttleworth run the charity. Canonical needs to demonstrate that they can evolve from a charity into a successful *business*.
Edited 2008-04-17 21:30 UTC
RE[3]: Don't block the others , shut up on the subject
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Don't block the others who try , shut up on the subject
Open message to Moulinneuf: Get a clue and get a life.
Edit: BTW, I'm not really a "Red Hat" person. I use Fedora, Ubuntu, and CentOS in my consulting work, and usually it's the Fedora guys here beating up on me for pointing out where Ubuntu does things better.
Edit2: Thom, I seem to recall posting to defend Moulinneuf from someone who wanted to refer to him as "the french guy" a while back.
Edited 2008-04-17 21:59 UTC
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Moulinneuf,
RedHat is by far the best example of a successful OSS pure play because (1) they truly believe that conscienciously following the OSS path will reward them in the end, and (2) they don't let their business decisions get all caught up in pie-in-the-sky delusions.
Linux's first frontier was and is the server. The next frontier will be the business desktop, which is a completely different animal than the home desktop. I'm optimistic on that front, and that is where my efforts are going today. My Linux business desktop projects have gone quite well. If things go well on the business desktop, perhaps the next frontier will be the home desktop.
Don't reach so far for the brass ring that you fall off the horse and get crushed by the merry-go-round.
Edited 2008-04-17 21:00 UTC
RE[2]: Don't block the others , shut up on the subject
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Hi,
The least you can do ... is get your facts rights. Otherwise it is just trolling :
Red Hat is not a 3 billions dollars company.
Red Hat was created in 1993, not 1995.
Red Hat is being realistic, and drives the FOSS adoption in all businesses by targetting the server market for a reason. Establishing the reliability of FOSS on the server will eventually drive the desktop, but not in an end user home desktop way. Fedora is here for that. How many home users will actually buy a support plan or services for a home desktop ?
Fedora truely drives innovation on the desktop and has first brought new features on the desktop (ConsoleKit, PulseAudio, AIGLX-Desktop effects, Network Manager, bluetooth enhancements, *legal* codec support, file system encryption, KDE4, PackageKit, iSCSI storage at install and much more) and this is innovation that all other distributions get credited for, without never remembering that Fedora was there first. Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar ...
Damn i just fed the troll.
Edited 2008-04-17 23:13 UTC
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http://finance.google.com/finance?q=RHT
Mkt Cap: 3.82B ( closer to 4 )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat
Founded 1995
History
In 1993 Bob Young incorporated the ACC Corporation, a catalog business that sold Linux and UNIX software accessories. Then in 1994 Marc Ewing created his own version of Linux, which he named Red Hat Linux. Ewing released it in October, and it became known as the Halloween release. Young bought Ewing's business in 1995, and the two merged to become Red Hat Software with Young serving as CEO.
Last year 100 + million are on record buying GNU/linux desktop computers ...
1) We are talking about Red Hat. Who dumped the Red Hat desktop on Fedora.
2) Never said that Red Hat was not an inovator , I said they blocked other ( this include Fedora ) from gaining OEM momentum because they where not interested in the desktop market and said it was not ready.
"and has first ... was there first"
look at the log file , no created elsewhwere , as for KDE please :
http://ev.kde.org/supporting-members.php
Red Hat as never been a supporter of KDE.
You got corrected by an expert ...
You know what Red Hat is recommanding for personnal Desktop use to it's clients ? Microsoft Windows. Sure they support Fedora ,pffft ...
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True, but there is a problem comparing Apple to the rest. Apple has actually invested some money in creating viable alternatives to the Windows world. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but there isn't a single suite of applications on Linux that comes close to the ease of use and functionality of iLife. iWork's is pretty much making Office 2008 look like a bad joke for anyone who doesn't need Office compatibility.
The simple fact is, each of these vendors are creating pretty nice distributions, but they're doing NOTHING to improve the software ecosystem that supports the operating system. An operating system doesn't just stand by its lonesome self, it needs software to make the machine useful - and yes, it will require the likes of Novell, Red Hat and so forth getting in bed with big names like Adobe, MYOB, Intuit and so forth, to get native versions of their respective applications on Linux. Until end users see the familiar names, they simply aren't going to move - its that simple.
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Anybody with a clue for a start.
There are other formats files can be saved in you know.
In fact, try and put a tender into any EU goverenment in an office format and see how far you get.
I tried a DOC format and got a polite reply from the UK government that they are supporting the use of ODF files and my email was being returned unopened and it would be looked at again when I re-submit in an open format.
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yes that means iwork apps aren't even compatible with themselves. You can't embed a Numbers spreadsheet into a Pages document like you can with Excel and Word.
There is a solution for other mac apps but not Apple's for some reason. See
http://linkback.nisus.com
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You can argue that Apple is more visible and more professional , thats debatable. Since the number of apple computer are a tiny portion ( around 25 million ) compare to what GNU/Linux ship as desktop solution worldwide.
But saying that GNU/Linux don't invest in the desktop compared to Apple is false. Apple product don't work on other people hardware and offer almost none of it's software on other OS , beside windows.
Your also wrong in thinking Apple is a better windows replacement with a broader software eco-system.
Sure Apple is a great competitor with great products with a great software eco system , superior and match to GNU/Linux , no.
As for the rest I will pass , no point in discussing something that you won't accept an alternative for. Because there not on GNU/Linux yet if your naming them.
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2005-07-13
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when the market is ready, red hat will most likely offer a solution. i highly doubt they would let the opportunity pass them bye. some times it is best to let other pave the way and spend their time in R&D and wait till the demand for teh droduct is there enough to justify it's existance for the company. in other words, when red hat believes they can pull it off successfully they most likely will, until time they will likely wait and see. there is nothing wrong with playing it safe.
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The market is ready , GNU/Linux personnal computers solution sell in the hundred of thousands from others.
The big problem was Red Hat that kept saying not ready and had/still have the ears of the big OEM. When the fact is they are not interested in supplying or servicing that market and competiting with other GNU/linux and against Windows.
Red Hat is unable to compete and be profitable in that market segment.
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It's for strategic deployment in the BRIC countries, where its benefits are appreciated. Europe already has a clue. So after the rest of the world passes us up, we Americans will be the ones standing around, looking confused, and wondering how the land of the free and the home of the brave got left so far behind.
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2006-08-09
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Dear Moulinneuf, it seems that you're a bit upset about something Red hat did or did not do.
Personally, I like Red Hat and the stuff it releases, so there's my disclaimer.
Maybe you're right that pushing the Lnx desktop will somehow make it a better world for all of us. And maybe Red Hat bets on the wrong horse, but we will only know that when/if Canonical starts making serious money. Then we'll have the proof that you can get there by way of the desktop. If Ubuntu gets to be the default Lnx dsktp and professional users will then end up paying Canonical for support, we'll know who was right all this time.
So far, neither Canonical, nor Linspire, nor Xandros seem to have been able to make lots of money, if any, with the Lnx dsktp, and if you have shareholders like Red Hat does you can't do that kind of stuff for more than a few years or you're dead.
But I hope you're not serious when you say that Red Hat is preventing anyone from achieving what you think ought to be achieved. Noone is preventing anyone to do anything. Just because Red Hat is a big player in the server market, doesn't mean they owe you anything. They are not creating anything that others can then not use. The stuff they bought, they open sourced or are on the process of doing that (if I recall correctly).
The project they sponsor (Fedora) is even the most open Lnx dstrbtn given the fact that all of its build tools are open.
Very few people are going to make any money on the Lnx dsktp.
The sad irony is that at the moment only Microsoft is making real money on the consumer Lnx dsktp since they receive a fee from Xandros for every copy of the Eee Pc with Xandros on it sold. Well, and Xandros itself I guess, one of the most looked-down-on Lnx distros.
The only big money to be made in Lnx operating systems is the business market. Red Hat is already there. Novell is already there. Canonical is trying to get in, they may get very successful. But it's now up to Red Hat to stay in that market, whereas Canonical wants to get in. Completely different situation, different strategy.
There's no way that Ubuntu can now be defeated by some Red hat product for the /home/user, so you should have rang the alarms bells four years ago when Ubuntu started.
On the other hand, Red Hat sponsors the XO laptop, which runs a Fedora DESKTOP and might, if successful, end up turning hundreds of millions of kids worldwide into Lnx users.
Say what?
Edited 2008-04-18 05:37 UTC
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Dear h3rman ,
Shareolder at Apple and Microsoft are in uprising for there taking on of the conusmer desktop market ...
Wait no they are laughing all the way to the bank ... Microsoft is also not using it's desktop money to jump into other markets , namely servers ... Wait ...
Red Hat as been know to do that for years :
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Red-Hats-Challenge/
The Red Hat GNU/Linux is not ready for consumers or the market is not ready for GNU/Linux consumer offers from Red Hat as been a Hit on the tour for years ...
It's just now : The truth Happens , where have I heard that ?
http://www.redhat.com/v/ogg/TruthHappens.ogg
You absolutely right , Red Hat dont owe anyone anything , they are a success on servers because no one believed in them and the community did not support them either , they did it alone and are now recolting the fruit of being a SERVER service only company. That mean that the next press release will be there annoncement that they drop the workstaions too .. Your words not mine.
I am beginning to wonder who the hell I am to expect the GNU/linux commercial behemoth to deliver on the promise they themself made to the community , there own Fedora and there shareolders. Having a long memory is a bitch and a pain when your surrounded by PR droid and senil company and developer who can't remember what they said last week.
look h3rman gonzo , the muppet show is about to start and your needed on the set ...
Airline boy is the new Darl McBride , my pop corn is ready for the start of SCO Airplanes 2 : The Red Hat.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you surrender
- Red hat
Laughing , reading then laughing some more.
One more , please ?
Red Hat you where our only hope !!!
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Apples, oranges, yummy, but wait - it doesn't mix.
Not its desktop money. But its desktop dominance and vendor lock-in. How on earth would Red Hat be able to pull such a trick? Linux/F/OSS got there without the dirty business.
Are you serieus? You're implying that Red Hat is just a parasite on the community? They are a PART of the community. Maybe you need some kind of paradigm shift in order to accept that, but that's, you know, sort of, uhh, like, a FACT.
In another post, you claimed that Matthew Szulik said that people should use Windows on the desktop. What he did say, in 2003, is almost exactly what Mark Shuttleworth said even last year. You convert people to Linux, they go down town, buy a computer game, Photoshop, 'f**k it doesn't work!' They will complain at your doorstep, not at Adobe's or the game studios's. Get real, that's what they meant, Shuttleworth and Szulik.
http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39116741,00.htm
I'm sorry if you were misled by the manipulative heading, but it has little to do with what Szulik meant. Of course he should have said "everybody just go f*** Micros~1 in the ass!" right? But then again, street cred. and Wall Street cred., sadly, is not always the same thing.
I prefer to play the drummer.
RE[2]: Laughing , reading then laughing some more
Member since:2006-08-09
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Moulinneuf, I don't know if you say some of the stuff you say for fun or because you really mean it.
1) Skipping part about the fruit. Give me a break.
2) Skipping part about the money. You know what I meant.
3) You claim that RH could just "make a consumer OS", install it on a computer, and sell it. As I said before, they are actually doing that. They sponsor the OLPC which runs Fedora but you didn't respond to that. Think of the potentially (tens of?) millions of kids running a Linux desktop OS on their green XO machine. It's, frankly speaking, a tiny little bit disingenuous of you to reply to all kinds of not-so-relevant things but not to that.
Frankly I suspect you just want Red Hat to try and lose a lot of money in this game. Canonical isn't even making a dime with the Dell deal, I suspect. Xandros made the Asus deal, which obviously RH cannot do since the "Classmate" (=Eee PC) is the XO's competitor. If RH loses big money in some phony Linux desktop dream and hurts it server position and corporate credibility, will you complain too?
4) In your eyes, the only way to be a good "community" player seems to be to try to conquer the consumer desktop market? How ironic. You're obviously claiming, then, that Xandros is a great community player? You know, the company that made another one of those MS patent bullshit deals?
Noone ever claimed that Fedora is perfect, which, again, is a distro very much suited for the desktop, and it's sponsored by Red Hat, but have you ever tried out, for example, how easy it is to spin your own Fedora? Have you tried out the Revisor software?
http://revisor.fedoraunity.org/
How you call that not contributing to the desktop? Lots of Red Hat people contributed to that, obviously it's little news-worthy, either because it's not made by Ubuntu or because the Fedora/RH marketing did something wrong. Of course it's just an example. As for the distro that's running on the XO, lots of ideas are born in that project that will end up making the Lnx desktop cooler than ever.
5) About the Mark Shutteworth thing, he said that Linux is not ready for the mass market yet, much the same thing Szulik meant. You're pulling a cheap trick when you "quote"
That's not a quote, that's an interpretation by the person who put that on the web. I gave you the real quote, at least what the man said literally if that was accurately done by that website, and that, especially in 2003, was simply the truth.
6) It's been a while since I've seen the muppet show. I thought Animal was the drummer. How could I know I was wrong.
You seem to be genuinely angry with Red Hat, I can't do anything about that, but why don't you start your own business selling Linux desktops (i.e., laptops, these days cause I meet fewer and fewer people that do not play games that want desktops), good luck and I sincerely hope you succeed. Maybe then we can tell Red Hat how hopelessly wrong they were.
7) You have apparently never worked at a public corporation. If Red Hat would suddenly start to be a hardware seller, even though margins are small, they've never done it before, and they're installing similar software on it to what Canonical is actually SPENDING MONEY for to send it to you FOR FREE then how on bloody earth are they going to justify that on the next shareholder meeting, while their core business the server and middleware etc. is making lots of money? Are they going to accept that cause well, you know there's a very enthusiastic person on OSNews whose dream is now coming true?
Fhew.. spent too much time on that, but I don't like being accused of making stuff up, and I worry about your ideology, too as a matter of fact.
I mean, you seem to think that all injustice will suddenly disappear when the Evil Empire at Redmond will no longer have their images put on all those millions of hard drives in laptops and desktops. Little secret, there's a lot more seriously unjust stuff out there than the desktop OS market which frankly nobody gives a shit about.
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You convert people to Linux, they go down town, buy a computer game, Photoshop, 'f**k it doesn't work!'
People aren't that stupid but I can see if you sold them on Windows compatibility with wine, that they would expect the most important Windows apps and games to work.
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