Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 19th Mar 2007 19:41 UTC, submitted by elsewhere
Red Hat is planning a packaged Linux desktop solution that it hopes will push its Linux desktop offering to a far broader audience than exists for its current client solution. The move is designed in part to compete with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 platform, which includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, which were released in July 2006.
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Member since:
2005-07-13
I agree: this is very significant and it has more to do with Ubuntu than with Suse.
Red Hat realized that losing the desktop mindshare is bad because the young geeks of today will be the system administrators and purchasing managers of tomorrow, who will buy what they know and like.
No, I don't think it has anything to do with Ubuntu. Keep in mind this will be a commercial offering, not a free community project in line with Fedora.
Red Hat does have a desktop, but it's priced around $250/seat and is targeted at specialized enterprise clients (it's sold 10 to a pack, last I saw); this would seem to be an offering targeted for more versatile deployments with probably lighter requirements. They've got no vision of marketing it at the consumer level, but they specifically mentioned the ability to download and purchase a subscription online, the same way Novell offers SLED (in addition to their conventional reseller channels).
No doubt they'd like professionals and power-users to opt-in as well, but as with SLED vs. openSuse many of those standalone non-corporate users would likely not see the value in subscribing for a service they are completely capable of maintaining themselves with the community project.
The IT-oriented trade and business mags have been full of stories and releases for Novell's commercial-oriented desktop linux starting with NLD, but really ramping up prior to and post-SLED. Even if some of it has been fluff, to put it mildly, there's no such thing as bad publicity. With SP1 due soon for SLED incorporating new updates from SL 10.2, that marketing machine is likely going to start ramping up again in the near future. Red Hat has been non-existent from a business desktop perspective, I've probably come across more press on Xandros as a desktop alternative than Red Hat. I think Red Hat is finally reacting, after years of continually maintaining that desktop linux had no viable commercial market outside of specialized workstation or managed environment applications.
I suspect Red Hat would be loathe to admit it, but I see this as a direct response to the traction, if not actual license sales, Novell has gained. Even if the ISV's are non-committal about bundling linux for business desktops, SLED is the distro they most often refer to. Even if companies are non-commital about moving to desktop linux, SLED is often the distro that's referred to. Even if nobody's actually buying it in massive numbers yet, people are still talking about SLED. Red Hat can't afford to lose mindshare, their brand value is too important to have Novell trumpeting client wins in the press, I'm just surprised it took them this long to respond.
Just my 2c...