Leading Linux seller Red Hat is becoming more aggressive in pushing its premium operating system products, using support contracts, pricing changes and certification restrictions to drive customers and partners to its more expensive “advanced” line. Also, Sam’s Club, the members-only branch of retail giant Wal-Mart, has entered the budget PC race with a $299 system running Red Hat Linux.
Red Hat Aggressive with Premium Linux
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Eugenia Loli
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of what used to be called IA ? So be was 2 years early on that market …..
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http://islande.hirlimann.net
Sometimes it pays to be pushy. They give away their base product for free (ISO’s) and contribute quite heavily to open source in general. Their profitable too. I like Red Hat, their a business so these kind of decisions make sense. The “Advanced” line makes sense beyond Red Hat’s well being too, like the slowing down of the release cycle which is more business friendly. I also like that they more thoroughly test their kernels then some of the other distros, I seem to experience fewer problems with them then some others. Their also highly responsive and fast on security fixes. All gravy to me…
maybe in near future, when get bit more steady ground under its feets, open-source companies may stop to provide binaries for free at all. So you cannot donwload even simpler ready-made distro, while sources will be still available.
This will be in total agreement with open-source licenses and rules, but may force all not-so-geeky customers to buy their packages
Well, the average IA was well over $500, most of them almost hitting thr $1000 mark. And that’s not counting the service plans. Besides, the average global PC price sold is $800, not $300 or $200.
You’re forgetting Debian. It will be there, like, forever.
Except that it makes more sense to have binaries available – it’s a bit like MS giving away IE. They may miss out on every possible sale, but generate lots more by the marketshare of the platform.
If the build isn’t too wobbly and has most of the stuff people need out of the box, this may be a winner for RedHat.
Too bad BeOS went down their failed IA route, something like this might have got them a place at the table, too.
Red Hat is the Leading Linux seller? That’s a joke, isn’t it?
“Their” suggests possession.
Ex. Their financial picture is good.
“They’re” = They are.
Ex. They’re doing the right thing.
Try and play Mp3 music you wont be able to unless you download.
Where is the support from redhat to setup playing DVD movies on your computer?
Until the 8th version Redhat did not have Scroll for your wheel mouse.
The supermount in Redhat mounts the cd as its boots but then you have to umount and mount for further use. Just extra little annoying steps.RedHat gnome graphics from the box, the bluecurve, has really terrible graphics. I find the programs very disorganized.
Sure, you can get all of these things to work, after exploring how to do it. But for the most part new people are going to go back to windows because they dont have to take the extra steps.
I have to say that Mandrake is much more advance than Redhat in this respect.
..You are forgetting cheapbytes, my friend :o)
No, it isn’t a joke. Or are you just being sarcastic?
This is definitely the way to go, especially in this capitalist, money driven culture/society.
Basically take OpenSource software which lets face it is quality softare, then sell it, oops sorry you’re not really selling it…you’re just paying for the support.
OpenSource has revolutionised Software Engineering, its philiosophy is a new chapter in the book of Computing Science.
It is the way to make software, however if you want to make money go get a real job. There is no business model with Open Source, and no money in the ideaology.
Oh and to the guy thats complaining about Redhat, this is called business pal, the sole aim to make money & profit…lets just say Microsoft have been very successful doing what they do best…no not make software but sell it.
We don’t care that you can’t play Mp3’s go get BeOS I hear they good with that stuff. We want to make money.
If you do economics, you’ll understand that competition is always, always good for the customer. Do you honestly think Mandrake or Lycoris would be so usuable if there were no other distro’s? I mean what was Lindows all about then?
I’ve heard even Linus Torvalds has stock in Redhat, can someone correct me if I’m wrong.
lets dont forget that red hats pr department puts out
stuff like “we own linux” we hate Mandrake” we hate suse”
and of course the people comment that they like their
business model.
fascinating.
The supermount in Redhat mounts the cd as its boots but then you have to umount and mount for further use.
I would hardly say that right clicking and selecting ‘eject’ is worse than whatever you would do in any other operating system. Eject unmounts then ejects the CD.
I have to say that Mandrake is much more advance than Redhat in this respect.
Okay, it’s because of people like you that I’ve wasted my time with Mandrake. I would much rather take less than an hour to install some things and have it work perfectly than have everything go wrong after installation and not be able to do anything about it: from Mandrake Control Center locking up to my USB mouse mysteriously ceasing to function!
Even though I don’t have to, I still buy their CD’s (well, every other upgrade) to support them. They really are the best Linux distro out there. Even Redhat’s hardware support rocks.