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Red Hat Desktop Unveiled
Gudlyf writes "Red Hat announced yesterday that they will be releasing a version of their OS -- dubbed 'Red Hat Desktop' -- targeted at corporations, universities and government agencies, "looking to upgrade their PCs but don't want or need all the features that ship with the latest version of Windows", said Matthew Szulik, Red Hat's chief executive, although it's not targeted at consumers. It will cost on average about $5 a month per machine, with additional support services available."
that they weren't interested in the desktop a few months ago... ?
~dijjnn
First they sync their release cycle with SUSE, then then rename their desktop products to personal and professional - just like SUSE, and now their releasing a Linux Desktop for the enterprise.
Come along Redhat, do keep up..
at $5 a month, it dosent seem too much cheeper then the upgrade windows ever 3 years option in the long run.
As any extra OS/Freeware programs you put on it
woudl probly have an equvelnet MS compatable version, i dont see too much of a saving hear as support is still extra..
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
"These organizations now, for the very first time, have an alternative to the historical Microsoft-desktop paradigm," he said.
Haven't tracked down the detailed specs of this realease, but what can possibly make that true for Red Hat Desktop, but not for any previous Linux distro?
Oh no... it's the future.
Now, we have both SuSE and RedHat with their very smooth and stylable desktop gui's that should work for anyone interested in trying out Linux as a desktop OS.
I did some realtime testing with this, and gave my dad a SuSE Linux 9.0 Live-CD and told him to stick it in his brand new HP Pavilion. The distro fired up smoothly and within ten minutes my dad was surfing the net, reading his mail and listening to the local networked radio. :-)
If this release of RedHat can match the likes of SuSE and others I belive we're finally set for - the year of the Penguin
"-Who said sit down?!"
-- S. Ballmer @ MSDC 2003.
I spend several hours a month supporting my mother-in-law and her skanky disease-ridden Windows laptop. I'd love to get her onto a nice Linux system, supported by somebody who's not me.
I'll install it, and train her, and then she can call the nice Help Desk boys when she can't execute the free screen-saver software that she got in her e-mail.
Hell, I'd go ten bucks.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
yes, interesting:
"To that end, The Red Hat Desktop offering will include the Citrix ICA Client as well as Vmware."
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
$75 for the initial package, maybe. Real support isn't included with that price. Nor is all the many extras you need with a Windows machine, like a virus scanner (that's more than $5/month right there).
This made the Minneapolis Star Tribune home page.
First, Red Hat decide that the desktop is not where they want to focus, and fire off the Fedora project to shift the focus for support to the community a la Debian for their non-enterprise focused distro. Fedora takes off well, certainly better than many expected, before RH9 EOLs, but not without causing a lot of grief for many of their existing enterprise customers, who don't feel that RH's existing lineup will work for them. Then, four days after the end of the Red Hat line, the announcement is made that there's a new Desktop offering that somehow slots in below Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS.
News flash: Elvis has left the building. Many enterprise customers, being confused by RH's current strategy and feeling less than satisfied by the Fedora have already moved to some other Linux distro for the desktop and are looking to consolidate behind one vendor that can cover their needs top to bottom (SuSE and to a lesser extent Mandrake come to mind).
Why, Red Hat, did you not announce this product long before the RH9 EOL, positioning it as RH10, for example? Many of my clients would have been reassured that they weren't being abandoned. Many were already happily paying the $5/month for support and feel betrayed. I've done my best to keep them in the fold, but your message hasn't been consistent and forthcoming enough. They don't trust you any longer.
I just have to ask - who is going to be manning the phones?
... screw that. Has nothing to do with nationality and everything to do with getting intelligent answers as opposed to someone following a diagnostic script.
If I thought I could get quality (geek level) support whenever I was having a Linux problem I would drop a five spot / month in a serious hurry,
but if the clown on the other end of the phone is neighbor to the guys giving phone support for Belkin and Dell
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
What Linux user doesn't have Acrobat Reader, Flash, a Java runtime, and RealPlayer loaded on their machine?
(Waves hand.) Me!
I'm actually thankful not to have most of that installed. For one thing it keeps me from viewing a lot of junky web content I'd prefer to just avoid. Yes, sometimes I'm hampered, but I have other machines for that stuff if need be.
Just last night I was reading a paper for school where gv on my RedHat 7.2 machine actually displayed better than Adobe Acrobat on my OS X ibook. I was astounded, as Adobe usually gives better performance.
I don't mind if a distribution includes non-free software; I'm still using some myself, just not on Linux. The thing that bothers me is when a distribution includes non-free software but claims to be 100% free. There's a place for hybrid distributions, those containing gratis software and/or shareware but still redistributable as well as, I suppose, Frankenstein distributions with enough proprietary crap to keep you locked in; however, there is also a place for the "100% free" (and/or "100% open source") distribution. I like the way Debian segregates things into three categories of "freeness" so you can easily set your distribution to be just what you want.
The thing that distresses me about this decision (and deception) on RedHat's part is that previously they committed to being 100% free, back when they finally replaced Netscape with Mozilla. I remember specifically seeing a statement that the only piece of software left in the distribution that didn't meet the Open Source definition was Netscape, that they were waiting for Mozilla to catch up, and that the minute it did they would drop Netscape and be 100% free. I remember after a RedHat install I used to specifically go replace the Netscape launcher on the panel with Mozilla, until I upgraded to 7.2.
I understand the economic realities that make them want to distribute this kind of software, but I do not appreciate the change in policy, and I appreciate the duplicity even less.
Actually, can anyone confirm that the product really does have these packages? Or is that just something a troll threw in?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
That's not really a good assumption as they're targeting small to medium sized businesses with this. Large businesses would probably have different pricing, just like they have different academic pricing. $5/mo is for the support, so I'm guessing volume licensing would apply to the support, since you don't actually pay for the software :)
Funny you mention genology programs. It's amazing what's available for Free (beer and freedom).
Obviously you have a point about the reams of third party software that exist only for Windows. But there's a large segment of users who would never wander into a software store and pick up a random program. It would just never occur to them. Their software universe consists of whatever they bought with the machine. In that market Linux can compete exceptionally well.
I think that most OSS programmers are happy that their software is getting wider distribution. Whatever motivated them to start the project in the first place can only be enhanced by having more users.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
I think the previous poster had in mind the abandoning of RedHat 9 line.
In terms of software itself, how is the new RH Desktop going to differ from old RedHat distros, RedHat Worksation, or Fedora? Is it simply Fedora + support or a come back to where they left off with RH 9?