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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Member since:2005-07-06
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.
Member since:2005-07-24
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
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-24
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
Member since:2005-07-06
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.
Member since:2006-11-15
Member since:2005-07-06
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.
Member since:
2005-07-06
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