Red Hat announced a new client product, Red Hat Global Desktop, at its annual Red Hat Summit tradeshow in San Diego. This move is designed, in part, to compete with Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Desktop, which has achieved success in business desktop markets, and with Ubuntu 7.04, which will soon appear on Dell PCs. Some reporting about this can also be found at the company’s magazine. Update: Elsewhere, talking security with Red Hat’s Mark Cox.
Red Hat Shows Its Global Desktop Cards
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Cant play movies/dvds? No games?… Not on my desktop.
Browser: Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/3.1.7196/1662; en; U; ssr)
I’m not sure why this guy got modded down. He makes a valid point.
I can imagine a day when we are all using web connected thin clients for productivity and communications and when we watch movies and play games on dedicated media systems.
But that day is not today.
Maybe Red Hat is on to something though. Prepare for the far future where Windows eventually loses its monopoly simply because the entire paradigm has shifted. Linux doesn’t seem to have a chance at replacing Windows, but maybe it can be the underlying technology for the “next big thing.”
Nah, he is just a troll trying to start trouble based on the fact that Fedora doesn’t support mp3 out of the box.
RHGD will of course be capable of mp3 playback but most likely one will have to install required packages to gain this functionality.
Besides that. The paradigm hasn’t shifted. The Desktop is still the Desktop and data and software still needs to be stored locally. Only for very few small things can the net be used for collaboration (GMail and other irrelevant services – just another rehashed hotmail-clone
.
Besides that. The paradigm hasn’t shifted. The Desktop is still the Desktop and data and software still needs to be stored locally. Only for very few small things can the net be used for collaboration (GMail and other irrelevant services – just another rehashed hotmail-clone
.
I think there is a slow change in the paradigm. RH is after all developing a desktop client for the range from SMB to large corporation. It is not so much designed for running applications across the web to an outside supplier but to run them over the corporate intranet. More and more stuff comes this way from your Oracle client to the increasing success of Red Hat’s partner Zimbra, in providing an alternative to Outlook and Exchange, using web based technology on an intranet.
JavaWebstart is a way to dynamically supply and update applications that remain available offline.
I find the need for inumerable installations of MS Office completely pointless and work creating for the IT staff that has to support this. If your office software is supplied across the network from a server, run remotely on a server or supplied as an intranet webapp, any of these approaches will simplify things.
As for data, at work I store all my documents and data on the corporate network for automatic backup, collaboration with colleagues and the ability to access it from any corporate computer. So even though I have a local copy of Office on my system if the network goes down I cannot do any productive work. We are all totally reliant on the network, the Windows desktop paradigm does not reflect this.
I think we are edging towards a paradigm that mixes the best of the “thick” PC desktop and the thin client philosophy. I think RH is thinking of the desktop from the server side as much as from the client side.
Edited 2007-05-10 16:22
That paradigm has existed all the time computers have existed. It’s known as the Desktop paradigm. The fact some things can be run remotely doesn’t change the paradigm the least bit, since this has been a part of the Desktop paradigm all the time. And was a part of the computing paradigm from the very beginning (though it took decades for the first implementation to show).
The paradigm hasn’t changed at all.
Running software and storing documents on a locally remote server isn’t really remote since the connection speed is quite different. And you are not exactly storing your work documents on a server at another continent
– personally I tend to store documents on the local machine AND at the server (because I can only access the server through VPN and not the local machine). The fact you cannot do any productive work when the network goes down is all the evidence we need for making it clear that the Desktopless Desktop isn’t a good paradigm. I can luckily keep working even if the network goes down (and it does because the IT-guys are incompetent – according to me, my classmates and our teachers 
The fact you cannot do any productive work when the network goes down is all the evidence we need for making it clear that the Desktopless Desktop isn’t a good paradigm. I can luckily keep working even if the network goes down (and it does because the IT-guys are incompetent – according to me, my classmates and our teachers
Even if I had my documents locally available I really wouldn’t be able to do much on them without access to our databases or the web. Our IT guys are not incompetent, some of them have learned how to set up RH servers in what used to be a totally MS shop so the network only goes down when Bell Canada drill holes through the cables which is fortunately quite rare.
That paradigm has existed all the time computers have existed. It’s known as the Desktop paradigm
You must be too young to remember that computers existed before the desktop paradigm. The first computers I worked with were DEC PDP8’s and PDP11’s no desktop there, we had text based terminals like VT100’s. The desktop paradigm was invented at the Palo Alto labs of Xerox and purloined by Apple for Lisa and then the first Mac’s, in the original concept this was primarily a free standing system.
As far as MS goes the original MSDOS , Win 1.x and 2.x environments were originally for free standing systems with any network connectivity grafted on as third party applications. At that time it was the Unix Workstation environment that was naturally built around the network with NFS etc.
I still remember the shock going from grad school in a university environment where every thing was connected together via NFS to a small scientific start up company with about 30 free standing PC’s running DOS and no network.
A new paradigm is beginning to emerge in part because the corporate intranet has become more than the pretty toy it was just five years ago and the new dream it was ten to twelve years ago. But really it is the total of the network based technologies that is downgrading the need for “fat client” desktops.
We have a global corporate portal, a local (national) portal and a laboratory portal. We use Citrix widely and Oracle via the Browser/Java client. We have an increasing deployment of diskless fanless thin clients. However Windows has not adjusted to the new paradigm. We don’t need bloatware like Vista to power our desktops.
I’ll ignore the obvious flame bait for a second, and answer:
1. Previous versions of Windows (pre-WinXP) couldn’t play MP3 either. Mind you, given the latest defeat Microsoft suffered from the hands of Fraunhofer (MP3 patent holder), I won’t be surprised if MS decides to drop the MP3 support completely in future WMP versions.
2. Previous versions of Windows couldn’t play DVD out of the box either.
3. Blaming RedHat for the U.S’ broken patent system is not only mis-leading but borders on pure hypocrisy. Blame your local Parliament/Congress/etc member first!
4. Adding MP3 and DVD supports requires 3 steps:
a. Read the Fedora/RedHat/etc FAQ.
b. Add the appropriate software repository to your package manager.
c. Click on the missing modules.
5. Desktop doesn’t necessarily means home entertainment PC – given the fact that >60% of the machines are sold with on-board graphics I can safely assume that most desktop machines will never be used to run full-screen computer games. (As opposed to Soliter, etc)
6. Among other things, I use my home workstation to run Quake 3, Enemy Territory, Quake 4, Doom 3, UT 2004 and X2. X3 (pre-ordered), Quake wars and UT 2007 are on the way. I assume that in your (very narrow) POV, these are not (?!?!) computer games?
– Gilboa
1. Previous versions of Windows (pre-WinXP) couldn’t play MP3 either. Mind you, given the latest defeat Microsoft suffered from the hands of Fraunhofer (MP3 patent holder), I won’t be surprised if MS decides to drop the MP3 support completely in future WMP versions.
Actually, WMP has been MP3 enabled since version 5 (first shipped with Win98).
2. Previous versions of Windows couldn’t play DVD out of the box either.
In fact, the ONLY versions of Windows that can play DVD OTB are XP Media Centre, Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate.
However, most OEMs bundle a DVD playback application/codec anyway, so nearly all new PCs can play DVD OTB.
Edited 2007-05-10 16:01
OEM doesn’t count. The same can be said of linux if an OEM provider decided to package Linux. Windows XP can’t play DVD’s out of the box, lets just keep it at that.
“To us, the traditional desktop metaphor is dead”
That I would love to see. and as for Desktop Linux
“simply not an option. Many of those companies that have tried to do this are not around anymore. We would have bought Corel [Corel’s Linux became the foundation for Xandros Linux] five years ago if that was the paradigm our customers wanted,”
Judging how Sun is doing with bringing StarOffice back from the dead, and Ubuntu is successfully converting Web 2.0 generation over to the desktop.
I remember when people were worried that Red Hat would become a monopoly on Linux.
Whether creating a niche in the server market is the best thing, time will tell…but that space is getting awfully busy just lately, and as for the whole Dell/Novell announcement etc etc. I hope they have a strong enough team to *Make deals behind closed doors*
StarOffice isn’t doing that much of relevance lately to be honest… there is a company that is working to make OpenOffice into a web app anyways, so that isn’t going away.
Ubuntu just grabs everyone elses work and makes it idiot proof. They’re hardly innovative, and without companies like RedHat, (look around gnome and see how much stuff RedHat holds copyrights to) Ubuntu wouldn’t exist.
I think one thing that Red Hat, along with many other “Web 2.0 will destroy Microsoft!” is this; Microsoft *know* that this so-called “Web 2.0” will play a major role, but don’t see it being the silver bullet that can replace heavy desktop applications – it many cases, it just just not viable.
If people here want to see the future of the desktop, its easy, look at Microsoft with its Office Server System, Windows Vista and its .NET Framework – the line between Server and Desktop is becoming more and more blurred; some things aren’t strictly server or desktop.
This is what is going to really hurt the opensource world if they don’t wake up and smell the changes – and want to know the sad part? Share Point and the likes are hardly innovative ideas; they’re pretty much all built on the .NET Application Server.
If the opensource desktop wants to get ahead it needs to not only focus on the server, and the desktop side, but how they interact with each other; each are not an island to themselves – both rely on each other, and it is about leverage the strengths of each paradigm resulting in a favourable outcome.
With that being said, its the small things that also count, for instance, on my desktop, a audio cd didn’t dismount properly after I finished ripping a cd, the net result? my ipod can’t mount, nothing can mount; solution, I had to kill off hal and restart it – I can now access my ipod.
Its small inconvenient things like that which cause people to turn off alternatives – don’t worry about the big things, there are no big things in the *NIX world which are holding back their adoption on the desktop, what is holding it back are large numbers of small little things; a cd not dismounting, audio not being deleted off the destination mp3 player when being deleted through a front end – Ubuntu with Rhythmbox, I delete the files off my iPod, but they still exist – all that’s happened is they’ve been deleted off the iPod database.
I think that is what frustrates me more than anything; if there were major problems with Linux, then sure, one could accept that lots of work needs to be done – but Linux is 99.999% of the way there, its just trying to cover the last 0.001% which seems to be the hardest.
“To us, the traditional desktop metaphor is dead”
wow, some one need to tell to the KDE crew that their work is in vane because Red Hat says so.
They should simply run with the idea.
There are already signs that they are though, with things like HotNewStuff, they are enabling a more internet focused usage paradigm.
Just get Digikam syncing with Flickr, more of a presence machanism for Kopete, and a way for KOffice to sync with Google tools, you’re more than half way there.
I think this is really a great idea, because most people don’t really use local tools anymore.
“I think this is really a great idea, because most people don’t really use local tools anymore.”
What ??? Nobody using local tools anymore? Nobody i know uses “external” tools (well certainly exclusivly), apart from Flickr and the odd e-mail acount. Certainly in hte businees and enterprise space, no-one i have ever met uses any of the Ajax Web 2.0 Apps. Personally i don’t want all my data / documents / photos etc exposed to the whole world (and certainly not for google to extract information and index them).
I think the whole Web 2.0 is just another bubble waiting to burst … it is nice and interresting and sometimes also useful … that’s about it.
Personally I don’t store anything on my local system, because I always end up removing it next time I reinstall or something.
In the data center, very little is stored locally. Everything is stored on the server, and everyone accesses it from there. This is just taking that idea and making it ready for the home desktop.
Google’s worth proove’s that many agree it is the wave of the future.
People don’t really use local tools anymore? That’s just crazy talk. I think most people use a mix of online and local tools, I don’t see any big takeup of online office apps, Real graphical work needs local processing, I really wouldn’t want to send that 700Mb .psd file across the interweb for storage, and I certainly don’t want a web-based IDE. Ripping DVDs/CDs, burning DVDs/CDs, video editing, all stuff that should be done locally, at least for the forseable future.
depends on how the wind is blowing…(pun intended).
C’mon people, can we please have some linguistic decorum on this site without folk pointing and screaming ‘language purist’ like some crazed body-snatching pod-person whenever someone raises this sort of point?
“To us, the traditional desktop metaphor is dead”
wow, some one need to tell to the KDE crew that their work is in vane because Red Hat says so.
This is because they don’t have the technology or the infrastructure available to them to build a desktop with the supporting libraries, APIs and henceforth applications of Windows or a desktop like KDE. After using RHEL and its CentOS form, that much has become very clear to me in the past few months.
Like a lot of others, Red Hat is desperately searching around for a new desktop paradigm that would mean they wouldn’t have to put in the sheer amount of donkey work required to build a desktop of the size, scale and general quality of Windows or KDE – certainly in their supporting infrastructure. Unfortunately for them, everybody is not moving their applications to the web. People still buy off-the-shelf software they expect to be able to install, they still use rich client software and ISVs have to be able to build that software with the development tools, libraries and APIs required to do that. You can’t just assume everyone will use online services, because that is doomed to failure, and it’s not something enterprises are going to fully do either.
I’m curious. What, specifically, can a developer do using KDE that cannot be done using GTK+/Gnome?
With the likes of Cairo, GStreamer, DBus and Telepathy — the last two of which are cross-desktop efforts — it seems to me that the Gnome platform is itself using just as advanced technology as KDE will be with Arthur, Phonon and the rest.
Of course, as everyone knows, programming in pure GTK in C is horrible. But I’m told the C++ API (gtkmm) is very highly regarded, as is GTK# on Mono. And then there’s PyGTK, which is falling-off-a-log easy — even I can use it.
What Gnome hasn’t managed to do anywhere near as successfully as KDE is to tie everything together under a single banner. What they need to do is produce a single website — say, developers.gnome.org — full of documentation and code examples for all the technology used on the Gnome platform.
They also need a talented artist to sit down and design a really modern GTK theme using all that Cairo drawing can offer. Even Clearlooks looks pretty old-fashioned these days with its inoffensive greys.
But to say the whole of the Gnome platform is antiquated and need massive investment to get it up to the standard of the competition just doesn’t ring true to me.
Edited 2007-05-10 21:08
First, let me say that I agree with you.
Second, I am wondering what this has anything to do with Red Hat at all. Customers can use and do use KDE desktops on Red Hat, CentOS and the like.
I am absolutely sure about this because that is what our company deploys.
“””
They also need a talented artist to sit down and design a really modern GTK theme using all that Cairo drawing can offer. Even Clearlooks looks pretty old-fashioned these days with its inoffensive greys.
“””
While I agree with a lot of your post, I must point out that “usability” does not go in and out of fashion like hem-line lengths or white shoes after labor day.
Clearlooks is a solid, usable theme today, and will be tomorrow. So is Bluecurve for that matter.
I went through my “Keramic is cool looking” phase a few years back, and find the soothing colors of Clearlooks to be quite comfortable and business-like.
Cairo might pave the way for some improvements, as long as the designers remember that it is simply one tool among many and don’t get overly wacked-out on the “endless possibilities”.
A shot of “boring” is good in a desktop theme after the first day of use.
Edited 2007-05-10 22:09
I’m curious. What, specifically, can a developer do using KDE that cannot be done using GTK+/Gnome?
Rather than shout tit-for-tat I’d just say look at the applications: Look at K3B, digiKam, Umbrello, IDEs like KDevelop and GUI development with Qt Designer, graphical config tools like YaST, a file manager such as Konqueror and a new file manager called Dolphin developed in a record amount of time really, technology that binds the desktop and applications together such as DCOP (now DBUS) and KParts etc. etc.
Then look at the equivalents, and then ask yourself if any non-open source developer would go for it.
Of course, as everyone knows, programming in pure GTK in C is horrible. But I’m told the C++ API (gtkmm) is very highly regarded, as is GTK# on Mono.
What Gnome needs is not necessarily another all singing and all dancing uber cool language like C# – what’s needed is an all-encompassing Gnome programming toolkit that binds the desktop and its applications together. KDE uses C++, which in many incarnations is bloody awful, but use C++ with Qt and it’s a whole different experience. Build that and you have the ‘wise man built his house upon the rocks’ platform to create the great applications and attract users and developers alike. If Red Hat can’t do that then they’re wasting their time, regardless of any new uber ‘we’re above Windows’ desktop paradigm they’ve found.
But to say the whole of the Gnome platform is antiquated and need massive investment to get it up to the standard of the competition just doesn’t ring true to me.
Don’t compare it to KDE but compare it to Windows, which no matter how much anyone pretends, that’s what you’re up against when it comes down to it.
Rather than shout tit-for-tat I’d just say look at the applications: Look at K3B, digiKam, Umbrello, IDEs like KDevelop and GUI development with Qt Designer…
Missed an important one out: Task Juggler. I simply haven’t found any project management tool anywhere close to that kind of quality anywhere else.
“””
This is because they don’t have the technology or the infrastructure available to them to build a desktop with the supporting libraries, APIs and henceforth applications of Windows or a desktop like KDE.
“””
You’re trolling Segedunum.
But I’ll answer anyway.
RedHat *could* just use KDE.
But the fact of the matter is that Enterprise Linux distros, who are absolutely free to choose what will work best for them, are uniformly rejecting KDE in favor of Gnome.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it. And that’s absolutely *all* I’m going to say on that matter.
If you want a DE war, I’m not participating any further.
But the fact of the matter is that Enterprise Linux distros, who are absolutely free to choose what will work best for them, are uniformly rejecting KDE in favor of Gnome.
Sigh…….. No they’re not – or at least many of their customers aren’t (ask a few SLES customers about 9 and 10 ;-)). It’s just that certain Linux vendors are flushing any chance they have of competing for the areas that Windows Server currently dominates in right down the toilet, mostly in the name of politics. I’m not too bothered that they want to do that. It’s their funeral in the next few years I’m afraid.
Any Windows sys admin who sees the level of graphical management tools on those so called enterprise Linux distributions compared to what they’re used to, and the hence infrastructure it’s built on, at the moment is going to laugh them out of town. It’s that simple. The fact that some people don’t like that is just par for the course.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it. And that’s absolutely *all* I’m going to say on that matter.
Well, the so called enterprise Linux distros are putting an explosive substance in their pipes and are smoking it. Ultimately, they have nothing to compete against Windows Server and push back against it.
As I said, when you look at the level of technical infrastructure available, and the development infrastructure with which to build those tools that will really get people currently using Windows Server sitting up and taking notice then based on the evidence of what Novell and Red Hat have produced with their chosen environments – it ain’t great competition.
Novell and Red Hat probably feel they can sit in their own niches of taking the low hanging fruit of people moving from older Unix systems. Bad, and probably fatal, mistake.
If you want a DE war, I’m not participating any further.
I’m not advocating a DE war at all. I’m advocating that people actually look at the technology out there every once in a while, look at the pretty good graphical management tools that Xandros are producing (probably the best around), look at the next best thing we’ve had which is YaST and then look at what Novell is now producing with their much vaunted new technology (i.e. nothing) and the measly showing Red Hat has after over ten years – then ask yourself why. Look at the applications as well.
If people are uncomfortable about that then sorry, but there you are.
Edited 2007-05-10 22:49
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Any Windows sys admin who sees the level of graphical management tools on those so called enterprise Linux distributions compared to what they’re used to,
“””
In this post, I perceive that you are saying that Windows 2003 server has better GUI admin tools than RHEL.
That may very well be true. Windows admins love their GUI admin tools and usually act like fish out of water when those are taken away from them. They tend to quit their jobs before they actually suffocate and die, though. 😉
I’m sure that GUI admin utilities are a top priority for MS.
But writing good gui tools is about 95% dealing with (differences in) config files and about 5% handling the GUI. It hardly makes a difference whether you are using Gnome, GnuStep, or Tk.
I’d look elsewhere than the DE tools for the reasons that explain any disparities that might exist.
Edited 2007-05-11 00:14
I like the concept there that desktop provides ability to use your data from the web as easily as data on the desktop.
However i don’t think that desktop as in traditional sense is dead. The internet connectivity is not always there. You can’t play games from online or do high bandwidth requirement tasks.
Then security is also an issue as well.
So i wouldn’t say traditional desktop is dead but i would say this is first step in right direction for future.
Firefox 3.0 will allow you to run web apps without a connection…
What i want is a seamless integration of web and desktop. It shouldn’t matter whether I am running an application on the web or desktop. I should be able to open my files, run my applications etc.
The second step is having online desktop. Think about having your applications no matter where you go or which computer you use. Now that is useful IMO.
The second step is having online desktop. Think about having your applications no matter where you go or which computer you use. Now that is useful IMO.
Try using NX from No Machine some time. That’s the kind of desktop paradigm Red Hat is actually hinting at, but they just don’t realise it – they just see the way that Windows desktops are as being wrong. The real problem with Windows is being able to do what you describe with things like Terminal Services. Licensing, and Microsoft trying to place that artificial barrier between clients and servers to preserve their licensing, almost always inevitably get in the way of using that technology to its greatest and easiest extent.
Alas, Red Hat is a long way from doing that, either in their thinking or in reality.
LOL
– I think you misphrased that.
Firefox can already do that – if the web app is running locally. If the web app is running remotely no browser will ever be capable of running without a connection. And if it is stored in cache, it is stored locally. So no, Firefox 3.0 cannot run a web app without a connection. At the very least you need a “connection” to localhost
Interesting editorial IMO:
http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/05/09/ask-shadowman-ye-olde-linu…
“The entire world asks:
So Dell decided to ship Ubuntu on the desktop. Doesn’t that bother you guys [Red Hat] at all?
…
Funny thing about experience, and how it shapes your beliefs. Nobody spent more time trying to bridge the divide between Linux and Windows than Havoc Pennington did. And after all those years, what did Havoc conclude?
His widely circulated quote on the matter: “It’s easier to win on user value than it is to match technical castles of unbounded size.” You can Google it.
…
Microsoft is not afraid of Ubuntu, folks. They are afraid of the pretty green toy that will teach kids a fundamentally new way of using technology. They are afraid of online services, and the explosion of collaboration that those services will enable.”
I think that’s an interesting thing about the GPL. Companies can go off and pursue other strategies while another does something else, meanwhile the whole stays strong.
Edited 2007-05-10 03:17
I wonder how fedora is going to relate to this? Will this be a spin of fedora? Will it be based on RPM?
I think Fedora 7 is shapping up nicely. It would be nice if they gave a bit more info.
It will be part of Fedora.
As part of a respin? Who knows, probably. It is going to be done within Rawhide though, so there is nothing stopping anyone from doing that.
There is more info around, this story isn’t the best though.
I think he may just have a point.
Havoc, as well as having perhaps the coolest first name in Christendom, is also a very smart guy. Along with a few others like Miguel and Aaron Seigo, he’s one of the real leaders of the free desktop movement. When he speaks on the subject, it’s generally worth listening to.
It will be very, very interesting to see what Mugshot/Big Board develops into.
And what’s more, with Ubuntu plunging headlong into the conventional desktop model, we can’t lose: even if Red Hat’s new focus turns out to be misguided, there’s still an excellent “old fashioned” open source desktop for us all to use.
> Along with a few others like Miguel..
> … one of the real leaders of the free desktop
> movement.
LOL, dude.
Miguel is a retard, who does nothing more than imitate what MS originates in order to lure users of free software into using patent encumbered and MS dominated technologies.
“””
Miguel is a retard, who does nothing more than imitate what MS originates in order to lure users of free software into using patent encumbered and MS dominated technologies.
“””
Well, aside from the “retard” part, there is actually a reasonable argument for drynwhyl’s viewpoint.
When I think of the phrase “chasing tail lights”, Miguel and his projects are the first things that come to mind.
That’s harsh, but damn if I don’t agree with him. Why innovate when you can imitate, seems to be Miguel’s take on opensource.
I’m honestly really glad to hear that Red Hat is back in the desktop game. I started out with redhat, moved around for a few years (slackware, FreeBSD, and various others) to see whatelse was out there and to be honest not everything I saw was all that bad but overall the experiences that redhat provided me was much more consistent and overall a nice feeling… despite rpm hell… oh boy!
Anyway, looking forward to it
Red Hat is sounding pretty ambitious lately. This sounds like a desktop OS integrated with all the new web apps they’ve been quietly developing.
So, it’s coming, it’s new and great and outshines about anything else. Details, technical information about the new incoming product: who cares?
It remenbers me of the way Microsoft used to announce products…
Come on red hat, stick to the facts…please
See Havocs blog for the facts…
RedHat has always done this, AIGLX is a recent example. It’s there to work on if you care to look, but RedHat has never noticeably advertised things they’re working on until it is close to functional.
They’ve been developing Sugar and BigBoard for a while, this will bring those together.
Red Hat, after all when Novell got the limelight with XGL they showed their AIGLX. Look now no one is using XGL to power Compiz/Beryl and AIGLX is in Xorg now.
I trust Red Hat far more than Novell when It comes to delivering the goods.
Well, except if you want to run Beryl/Compiz on an ATI card that requires the proprietary fglrx driver, in which case you’re quite happy that Xgl exists…
Depends what cards, the opensource ATI driver for 7.2 has full acceleration for older ATI cards like 9200 which fglrx don’t support.
Yes, that’s why I mentioned cards that *require* the proprietary driver… 🙂
Red Hat has proven time after time that it is a good free and open source player, maybe they are up to the next big thing, then we will all profit from it. Maybe RH chokes to death on this one, then we lost a good player but their heritage will live on, maintained and further developed by others — unlike proprietary companies’ software.
Short message: With FOSS you don’t have to rely on the well-being of a single company and experiments can be allowed.
I had heard about this news on the fedoraforum. It makes sense for Redhat to come out with a desktop version. I will continue to use the completely free Fedora version since it has the cutting edge packages and kernel. Maybe it will bring less complaining about “Fedora isn’t stable” since the desktop version will probably be less cutting edge and more mature.
Red Hat just don’t get the domain of the desktop. People have been trying to pretend for years that all of your applications and your desktop will be online and your local desktop won’t matter – from Sun and Oracle’s Network Computer, to Google apps to Red Hat’s Global desktop, they’ve all been proved to be wrong. You may have a rich desktop with more online services integrated with it though, but you can’t pretend everything will magically just appear online.
“Users, requirements and technologies have changed so dramatically over the past few years that the traditional one-size-fits-all desktop paradigm is simply exhausted.”
People still use rich applications a huge amount, they still expect to be able to install off-the-shelf software and ISVs still expect to be able to develop that software. If you can’t offer that, you’re wasting your time.
Our strategy is to deliver technologies that are specifically appropriate to these varied constituents,” Stevens continued.
Translation: we just can’t deliver a desktop of the scale that’s required, so we’re going to try and target it at specific and probably non-existent niches.
“To us, the traditional desktop metaphor is dead, it’s a dinosaur. We don’t believe that recreating the Windows paradigm does anything to increase the productivity paradigm of any user.
Then you’ll fail – again. People buy, install and use rich client software all the time and you need the supporting infrastructure in your desktop to do that. The actual advantage in getting away from Windows is getting away from Windows’ licensing model of creating distinctions between machines across the network. If you want to run an application from here on there, then do it, without licensing issues. That’s where the advantage comes from, but you can’t skimp.
The new model has to be about the user, centered on activities and not just based on documents and applications.”
If there are no applications there are no users.
This move is designed, in part, to compete with Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Desktop, which has achieved some success in business desktop markets
Has it? The supposed Peugeot deal is dredged up every single time, but it is the only one in existence of any size Novell have ever been able to point to. Goodness knows what concessions they had to make to get it.
The RHEL Desktop 5 is meant for enterprises that need high levels of desktop security and comprehensive network-based management tools.
RHEL actually has management tools, and graphical ones at that?
…so trying to become an appendage of the current incumbent was “simply not an option. Many of those companies that have tried to do this are not around anymore. We would have bought Corel [Corel’s Linux became the foundation for Xandros Linux] five years ago if that was the paradigm our customers wanted,” Szulik continued.
Yet, it is what people want. Xandros still has graphical management tools you and your customers can only dream of, whether that’s a management tool used locally using a networked management API to communicate, or run over some remote desktop protocol.
“The enterprises that we are talking to do not see the desktop of the future as being the same as the one that exists today,” he said.
Well of course they said that. It doesn’t mean they aren’t going to want to develop software for it or buy off-the-shelf applications and install them though.
From eweek:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2105246,00.asp
Customers will be able to download it and get a Red Hat Network subscription on the Web for it, which is what we feel is the distribution wave of the future anyway,” he said.
Novell believes this as well, but in the mass, throwaway desktop world this is the past. No one wants to get a desktop and then pay a rolling monthly or annual fee for it. They’d rather pay a license and get their updates for nothing, even in enterprises. Paying for updates and support is something reserved for business and mission critical systems and servers.
That is true today, because that’s what users are used to. I like the Shadowman article on the subject, it’s analogy is Henry Ford’s quote: “If I would have asked users what they wanted, they’d have asked for a better horse”. People in general don’t like change. For that reason, Online Desktop won’t catch on for general desktops.
I’m a part of that niche, and so is your kid more than likely.
Then let Ubuntu still drive the better horse forward. As for RedHat failing, they are by far the most successful company in the FOSS space, I think they’re intelligent enough to know what they’re doing.
Some of the best graphical tools in the Linux space actually – only YaST and maybe Mandriva’s Control Center is better, and that’s only because they’re perhaps more familier.
The current desktop paradigm has been around since the 80’s and nothing really has changed. Local apps aren’t going anywhere, but the desktop will be more focused on engaging and enabling online content. It will certainly make my life easier.
Seriously though, how much are ISV’s really doing for Linux today? Not much, most of the software of relevance for Linux is built in the community. That simply isn’t a good argument.
Pardon? If I go into Novell today, I can pay for several years up front – that’s no different to the Microsoft model.
Effectively, when you purchase Microsoft software, you are paying for, upfront, 5 years of support in the form of downloadable updates.
Its how it is marketed which counts; if Novell turned around and said that for 5 years of support and updates, it’ll set you back NZ$300 – that would be considerably less than the NZ$ pricing of Windows Vista.
When people hear ‘subscription’, there are negative connotations – they need to get rid of the notion of ‘subscription’ when selling their software to end users, and instead offer them a ‘one off’ price – they think they’re getting a better deal, and you make a sale; its the whole psychological idea of needing to ‘own’ something where as rent comes with this idea of ‘it can be taken off me at any moment’.
I’m glad that redhat is entering again in Desktop market…. with strong statement…. I hope its not too late… I have used redhat 5.x,6.x,7.x,8.x,9.x distros and fedoraas well but for me they started losing grip from market the day they seperated out redhat and free fedora product… i hope they have learn’t the lesson that what is installed on sys admin guys desktop is going to get deployed on rest of the desktop and servers because he is more comfortable with his desktop!