Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat's CEO Suggests Windows For Home Users
Selecter was one of many readers to point out a ZDNet story in which "the CEO of Red Hat now says that Linux is not ready for the desktop, but may be ready in a few more years. Curious - I'm wondering if this is the start of a corporate only retrenchment of Linux, or just a bump in the road to Linux having a wider desktop share?" Apropos that, Gwobl writes "Jim Lynch, over at ExtremeTech, weighs in on the fate of the Linux desktop, now that Red Hat has apparently turned its attention to the enterprise and Novell is buying SUSE (to go with Outlook clone Ximian, which it also owns). Lynch's take: Cheer them on! The Linux world needs these strong champions. And don't overlook Novell's networking roots. Time was, Big Red defined networking."
Dear Redhat,
Thank you so very much for the lovely knife which you planted in my back this morning. The handle is immaculate and the steel of very good quality.
We realize this is a turbulent time for redhat and i had feared that you would not have time from your friends while you transition to an enterprise-targetted company. It was as such very nice to recieve your little gift and know you still cared. I was talking to Linux, Alan Cox and Mandrake, and they feel the same about the similar gifts you sent them.
Love,
SUSE
and until there is a Linux distro that "just works" it won't be.
Consider:
The lack of good font support in X. But it's not just X. It's applications too. There's no unified way to use fonts, or to use the "right" fonts.
Lack of good clipboard support in X: Perhaps it isn't X that's the problem. But most applications cannot agree on what clipboard format they are using. Forget about copying an image in Konqueror or Mozilla and pasting it into OpenOffice. Or even formatted text for that matter. Sheesh!
Number of Linux distributions: There's no way to
make a good installer that will install a commercial app on Linux and have everything work. There are too many dependencies for specific versions of libraries and things that would make this sort of thing worse than any kind of Windows DLL hell.
Drivers: Linux intentionally makes it difficult for people to release binary-only drivers. Of course, Binary only drivers are a bad idea anyway, some vendors will insist on it such as NVidia.
Games: Linux would make an ideal game platform IF games were released for it. Now I realize this is a chicken/egg problem of course, but you have to factor it in when thinking about if Linux is really ready for the Desktop...
All of this being said, I do use Linux as a desktop. I feel comfortable with its limitations. I'm not an average user though, and I wouldn't expect any average user to figure out how to make Linux do what it can do.
Now, where I disagree with Red Hat is that you should _not_ use Windows. Use Mac OS X. It's way better than windows in design, and just works.
if linux goes back to the popularity it had in 1999ish, all the "1337 5cr1pt k1d5" will be happy again because their personal identity, defined through their computer's operating system, will be closer to unique once again! (speaking as someone who was one of these people back in 1999, and had a wise unix guru tell me why i was being a dumb kid, and helped me grow up by losing that attitude and demonstrating linux advocacy where appropriate, and avoiding it where not)
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Maybe he's just being realistic? Don't get me wrong, I've used RH daily since 5.2. I've also supported Win9.x and XP for friends, family, and co-workers. When a linux distro has that slick of an install ("Just click "next""...), along with *all* the device drivers, it'll really take off on the desktop.
And that's the catch-22, IMHO. I believe that the truly successful desktop linux company/distro will pay most all of their attention to simplifying and integrating things in the GUI, and 3/4 of their devel's will be device driver people. Why do I say this? because, people buy computers for its devices. Device manufacturers won't be arsed to write linux drivers until it has a much larger market. It won't have that larger market until you can plug XYZ into a USB port without thinking, cuz it had a penguin sticker on the box.
C|N>K
What the hell is this idiot thinking?
On the one hand, he just pissed off a lot of the loyal Red Hat users. On the other hand, he just turned a bunch of consumers off of Linux. And on the third hand, for you three-handed folks out there, he's going to turn off his enterprise consumers as well by saying, "There's something we don't do well."
Now it may very well be true that Linux doesn't do the desktop well, it may not be. I've got my own opinion, as do you.
The point is that when you are trying to sell something, as Red Hat is, you don't say, "We don't do this, and don't think people should try it with our product." You say, "We may not do this well, but we think people can do it, and we're working hard to make the experience even better." This is Public Relations 101 for cryin' out loud.
How the hell did Red Hat get this loon? And what's the over/under on Red Hat's PR department releasing an "Explanation" within the next 24 hours???
Things are not going well down Red Hat way.
However, Szulik expects Linux to be ready in a couple of years after it has had time to mature.
What is it, a fruit? It takes time to ripen? I think not. That's just stupid. RedHat Linux is not suitable for the home user desktop because RedHat has not made it so. Waiting will accomplish nothing.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Funny, it wasn't that many years ago I heard basically the same argument aimed at home computers. Why would you want a computer in your home, anyway? The small fraction of nerds in the community that build their own will never make them popular.
And a few years later I heard the "they are going to go with a large, reputable company" argument too, except back then it was used to explain why the clone makers were doomed and IBM was going to rule.
Try as they might, companies (and especially big companies) don't cause trends. They follow them, and attempt to profit from them.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. RedHat's progression shouldn't be suprising to anyone who's read "The Innovator's Delima".
The slashdot posting should be modded -1, flamebait. The actual quote from Szulik is, "I would say that for the consumer market place, Windows probably continues to be the right product line," he said. "I would argue that from the device-driver standpoint and perhaps some of the other traditional functionality, for that classic consumer purchaser, it is my view that (Linux) technology needs to mature a little bit more." You will note that the posting says nothing about "home users" while the headline of the ZDNet article clearly says "home users."
Another quote from later in the article: "We think that the enterprise desktop market place is much more strategic and has buyers whose needs we can exceed." The consumer market wants their computers to work with their digital cameras, GPSs, MP3 players, favorite games, etc. and, like it or not, Linux isn't there. Some of the lack of support is due to a "chicken and egg problem" of no one asks for such support so its not there and because its not there, no one asks for it. When some large companies tell their suppliers that they're out of the bidding because they don't support Linux, you'll see support for high-end stuff that rapidly filters down to support for "consumer" level stuff.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Red Hat CEO says that users should use Windows!
Microsoft to use Apple CPU in next-gen gaming console, forgetting that Macs suck for gaming!
Apple computers comprise world's 3rd fastest machine!
Honest to God, what's next? Has the sign of the apocalypse befallen us! Run, run while you still can, before the legendary Apple OEM 2-button mouse is nigh!
--
$tar -xvf
Sorry, but Red Hat has sucked for awhile now. They continually been behind in package management for example. Why should I need to go download a third-party Red-Carpet management app to get what apt-get and urpmi give me on Debian and Mandrake respectively? up2date has very basic package installation support if you subscribe to RHN (which we did, now we're screwed in 6 months) or hack in your own repositories.
As someone who just installed about 6 Red Hat boxes into production after convincing the boss that we might as well go with the "commercially supported" distribution, I now face absolute product obsolescence in 6 months (Red Hat 9 will have no further updates, apparently including security fixes, after April 30th 2004). I tried to convince him that Debian was a decent choice, but it backfired when the "stable" distribution doesn't even install smoothly on our new hardware (APIC issues causing lockups DURING install on brand new Asus AMD boards). The only way to get around it was to compile a custom kernel completely without APIC support. Obviously this didn't bode well with proving Debian is a good distribution for the business environment. I fear it's going to be back to Mandrake for us on the servers. :-(