Red Hat Desktop Edition

Sivar writes "Red Hat plans to enter the desktop business OS market, The Register reports. Red Hat says that the move is in response to growing frustration with Microsoft which has peaked since the introduction of Microsoft's new licensing scheme. The article states that the desktop offering is due next year and, surprisingly "...the company is considering subscription-based pricing.""

Comments

Should work

[JanneM]

The subscription very likely covers ongoing support and (semi-)automated updates. This removes some of the need to employ Linux administrators by the companies themselves; in effect, it entails a standardized outsorcing package for desktop support. Depending on the price point, this can be a good deal for a lot of companies. This won't mean there is _no_ need for administrators within the company; rather, the local admin is relieved of a lot of the drudgery, and can do his/her work with the full backing of expertise from Redhat.

/Janne

Re:Competitive advantage?

[Ami Ganguli]

You probably wouldn't be the target for this. Many offices use only an office suit, browser, and e-mail on the majority of desktops. You can leave the handful of users who have greater needs running Windows (at least short-term).

RedHat has played this perfectly. They've let others develop desktop until the combination of mature technology and market demand is in their favour. Now they move in and use their considerable name recognition to clean up.

ObDebian

[spongman]

I like Debian's subscription-based pricing scheme the best.

(sue me, I've got karma to spare)

a long way to go

[selderrr]

I fear that for linux to enter a business market on the desktop, there's still quite a long way to go in terms of user friendlyness. On all other fronts, linux equals or wins against MS, but on the desktop, GUI is the only thing that really matters :
- stability ? XP is stable enough for the desktop
- security ? XP with no services is secure enough behind a corporate firewall
- CPU efficiency ? When running Office and Outlook as sole applications on a 2GHz PC, you've got to go pretty ballistic to get inefifcient.
- open source ? You really thing any desktop user gives a flying donkey ?
- commandline unix underpinnings ? see 2 remarks above

all that matters is how well users can become at easy with their machine (in their own adorable shitty, messy and totally disorganized way. Remember that a desktop user does NOT WANT to understand his computer. He just wants the computer to adapt to his personal shitty messy and totally disorganized way of organizing things)


I did the test many times and put a linux box in front of a reasonably willing (although reasonably dumb) subject and frankly, they didn't even figure out how to reset their desktop. Linux just doesn't get it when it comes to dumb-ass desktop users.

Re:a long way to go

[Querty]

security ? XP with no services is secure enough behind a corporate firewall

<sarcasm>Sure, I only run IE, Outlook, Word and MSN messenger, so I have nothing to be afraid of</sarcasm>

Re:a long way to go

[ponxx]

> I did the test many times and put a linux box in front of a reasonably willing (although
> reasonably dumb) subject and frankly, they didn't even figure out how to reset their desktop

This has absolutely nothing to do with user-friendlyness, it's merely a case of what people are used to. What normal person would think that to reset your computer you have to click on "Start" and then on "Turn off your computer" to be given the option of "Restart"?

In terms of user-friendlyness for someone who has used neither before I imagine they would be very similar. The three things working for Windows are:

• It being pre-installed on 90% of computers sold. Have you ever tried installing XP from scratch? Compared to SuSE 8.0 (FTP install), XP took three times as long, needed user intervention every 10 minutes, needed seperate drivers from the manufacturer for half my peripherals as well as rebooting at least 4 times until i had all the lates security patches installed.. SuSE was up and running in 30 minutes by essentially choosing "standard system" left my windows install intact, included it in the boot manager, found graphics, sound, printer ...
• previous exposure. People have learnt the ways of windows, even if they are inconsisten. They don't like to change.
• program lock-in. As many others have said, deliberately incompatible document formats mean it IS a nightmare to convert to LINUX if you have a large number of interlinked spread-sheets etc. Then again, in my experience different windows/office versions are not always as compatible as they claim :).

MS business desktop is more than just the OS

[Brento]

The hidden cost of MS's business desktops has always been the tools. You can't simply buy licenses for XP and call it a day: you need administration tools (SMS), antivirus tools, firewall tools for your mobile users, service pack distribution tools, etc. None of these are bundled with the cost of XP (crummy firewall notwithstanding), and the desktop costs get expensive quickly.

I'll bet RedHat is going to sell this as an alternative to the frustrating patchwork of programs required to administer a network of 50-250 PC's, because that's always been a MS weakness. MS has decent tools like SMS, but they require so much knowledge & work that they don't really pay off until you've got a bare minimum of 100 PC's.

Not that desktop Linux rollouts won't have a learning curve, of course.

Already exists, few care

[nuggz]

Let see

MS demands subscriptions, people get upset, they don't want to have to upgrade.

Debian has free subscriptions, there is no mass exodus to the world of Debian/Linux

Redhat offers subscriptions, yippie skippie, the world will move to Linux. uhh why?

I agree

[HanzoSan]

However I'd say win2k is more stable than XP.

XP lacks in the speed department as in the OS itself is too slow.

XP can be secured by knowledgeable users but its not secure by default, viruses, trojans, hacking through scripts in email, or the browser prevent Xp from being secure enough for the casual user.

Ease of use is the main thing linux needs to improve on, until Linux is as easy to use as OSX its not going to beat Windows.

Being just as easy as Windows is not good enough.

Whats missing from linux is quality

[HanzoSan]

Linux has functionality, all it needs is the quality of say OSX.

Functionality is fine but to beat Windows you have to look professional, nautilus is the most professional looking interface to work with so far, Redhat should fund development of nautilus, bring back Wozniak or whatever his name is who built Nautilus, and finish what they started.

Re:Linux isn't ready for many companies.

[stock]

Americans say , "put your money where your mouth is", and "money talks".

Well now, if your wallet is empty, and you want to continue your business, people get inventive. Linux is the lumber and wood lying around (for free) to make it happen.

The claim that all my tools, spreadsheets, documents are in ms office format, and thus i can't switch overnight is true. But company's should really focus on platform independant formats instead.

number 1 rule was/is still , never have your computing stuff tied into a single ICT company/supplier. Many company's still alive today took the wise decision in the past to just buy the custom made package including its source code. In such a position no software company in the world can stall your business.

Robert

Lucky its not aimed at you.

[Psarchasm]

Most corporate users who use PCs and do not work in the IT department need the following...

Browser
Email
2-3 Corporate Apps
Word Processing

Thats it... You will have some that require spreadsheets, calendaring, and document sharing - but really thats about it.

Making the argument against this type of decision from the point of view of a PowerUser, or Developer is pointless. Yes if all your apps are only available on Windows, it won't work for you. But you are not 90% of all desktop users.

It's about service not product

[gelfling]

Hey guys and girls; take your 'leet hats off for a second and think.

It's about product DISTRIBUTION, SERVICE AND SUPPORT. It's about UPGRADES, PACKAGING AND BUGFIX. It's about NOTIFICATION, PROCESS AND BIDDING.

Can You Dig It, Can You Dig It? Caaaannn Yooooouuu Diiiig Iiiiiiiit.

Depends on your distro then

[Vanders]

I'm sat in front of a box that formally had an SBLive!, and still has a Logitech QuickCam Express plugged into it.

Mandrake 8.0 detected both, installed the correct modules, and both worked perfectly well from the very first boot.

The same applied when I removed the SB Live! and re-enabled the onboard Via audio (Don't ask). Kudzu detected the change, removed the emu10k1 module, and loaded up the via82cxx module.

I see no reason why, if Mandrake can do this, the others (E.g. Redhat and SuSe) can't.

Admittedly, all of this is a bit of a kludge, and as we can see, the results differ across distributions. Maybe someone else can do it better? ;)

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