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Ubuntu to Bring About Red Hat's Demise?
Tony Mobily has written a thought-provoking editorial for Free Software Magazine that makes the bold prediction of Red Hat's eventual demise at the hands of Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu. Calling on memories of Red Hat alienating their desktop user base to focus on their corporate customers and making money, Mobily states that many of those alienated desktop users are also system administrators who now feel more comfortable with Ubuntu and will make the choice to use Ubuntu Server over Red Hat now and in the future.
Feh. Lots of us abandoned Red Hat after the crappy RH9 and following carpet snatch. Red Hat didn't die then, and it isn't going to die now. Ubuntu's not going to change that any more than Gentoo did.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They give it away for free - it can't be any good, right?
Agreed... a lot of businesses won't use free stuff because, if it breaks, who can they blame and order to fix it? At least with paid support you get a solution, with free software however, you're most likely to get "fix it yourself or wait for it to be fixed"
I'm all for Open Source, but I can see why some won't embrace it.
Summation 2
Stop the presses! :)
I was one of those disaffected desktop users, but I still use RHEL (er...actually CentOS) for server machines that do real work. If you don't need bleeding edge desktop gadgets, it's still OK for desktop use as well. Ragging on RedHat because they had the temerity to focus on the part of their business that generated profit for them seems a bit harsh. There's plenty of other distros to choose from, including Ubuntu, if you want to live in the fast lane.
Cheers,
Nothing is stopping you from paying for support if you want to. The flexibility of Free/Open Source Software is that if you don't want to pay for support, you don't have to.
The beancounters where I am would be oblivious. I tell them I need $x for whatever project, the CIO vets my proposal, the CFO (well, his staff) finds the budget and off we go.
They would have no idea if the OS cost money or not in my case. I expect there are other places much the same.
The article itself is a joke, and does not actually detail any valid reasons about why Ubuntu will displace Redhat in the market. The 5th and 6th paragraphs are nothing more than "I want to brown-nose Mark Shuttleworth" crap that also does not feed the main argument of the commentary^H^H^H^H rant. THe last two paragraphs which barely have any meat on them are nothing more than rants not backed by any citations, evidence, deep analytical thought, etc. The crux of the article revolves around Redhat alienating their desktop "not paying a penny freeloaders", which is retarded because a) redhat's revenue shotup when they mandated fees and b) umm, whats Fedora again ?
While I commend Ubuntu and everyone else for their efforts on the desktop front I think it is very important to note that beating Redhat is going to require quite the effort, skill and resources. Redhat still commands other distros in the areas of Income, Innovations, and the holy-grail-of-almost-everything: Marketing. SUSE has been trying to beat Redhat for how hard and how long ?
(Maybe this company is trying for the "Dvorak-angle", which is to write something dumb and generate lots of attention to a whole lot of nothin')
I think that he is wrong about the corporate market. There is too much momentum there. The corporate market needs experts when they ask questions like, "I'm running a 400 server farm, fiber switched, ..." As long as Redhat provides that expertise to corporate users, they will keep selling. Where Ubuntu will gain share is in the small office and growing organization markets, where choices have not yet been made, are made by newer system admins, or are strapped for cash.
I remembered the CEO of the company I worked for sometime ago (they are making an Expedia like web portal for Mexico tourism).
He called me to his office (I was the "Open Source evangelist") and asked me what was the good thing in Open Source (specifically Linux at that time). After I tried to explain him, trying to supress my "enthusiastic bachellors" spirit, about the benefit of using an open source solution to do what they were doing (a "service based" buisness, instead of a "software" based company), he told me (something I will always remember) that free things are not good for companies, because it is the total oposite of an economy and, for there to be an economy there assets/services must be traded for money. In the absense of this (e.g. with "free lunch") a company can not be inside the "economic circle". [sorry, rough english translation of what I remember].
If I were to tell him now, something like 5 years later, I would tell him that, in reality Open Source (at least GPL/Linux) is not a "payless" or "gratis" asset. Because, when any company uses the software they have to (a) contribute to the community (pay, in terms of intellectual property) and (b) pay for support/integration, because the advantage of the closed source solutions is the cohesion they achieve in their software (something really nice about Microsoft products is that they work happy togheter, although for some people this is something bad because they "tie" the client), unlike open source software for which there exist thousands of possible combinations which, if the company is lucky, would be able find a half assed script to make two make 2 programs poorly interact with each other.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Ubuntu is very nice. But it's server edition doesn't have the sanction of the interest of the rest of the world. Indeed for better or worse, RH has the attention of many entities, ranging from Oracle to IBM.
And to say that Ubuntu's server must be excellent because its desktop-focused distros are is like saying that Ford's trucks must be great because their cars are cool. Outwardly, it would appear that could be the case, but in reality market forces are completely different in cars and truck markets, just like they are in server and desktop distribution.
Ubuntu has done a rational job (and still incomplete) of making a viable desktop-focused OS. Yes, admins use it. Yes, they tend to use in one place (desktop) what they know for another application-- the server. Yet Ubuntu isn't that far away from RH. And the number of admins using strictly Linux is still very small, although growing a bit each day.
Summary: the lines don't join together in the logic. Yes, Ubuntu is cool, but it in no way spells the end of RH and it's juvenile to think so.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
if you love open source, I don't think you wish goodbye for Red Hat!
I'm using Ubuntu for desktop, Red Hat for server and Novell for workstation (collaboration), that the way they fits, Ubuntu being good for Desktop means only its good for desktop
plus! no boss will risk running a system no one certified to administrate
"Steve Jobs invented the world" -- Bill W. GATES
... is they live in a dream world.
I wonder when the last time was that any company got Microsoft to fix *any* bug they found in a released version of software?
It seems like even giants of industry can't get them to fix holes any faster than peons.
Weird, when Redhat changed its desktop oriented distribution to Fedora, I wasn't alienated. Fedora is now better for a desktop user than Redhat ever was. I think it was a good choice that helped the users.
Some people seem to have a problem that there are no more packaged distributions, but why? I can get the same system faster and much cheaper by downloading it.
Interesting idea, but the wrong target. Red Hat have spent years and much skill building up their strong position in the enterprise and no other Linux outfit is likely to be dislodging them any time soon.
Much more vulnerable are Novell/SuSE and their rather hamfisted "me too" strategies and lesser distros like Mandriva. Those are the ones Ubuntu is likely to take market share from. SuSE could be especially vulnerable since their OpenSuSE "community" distro is arguably just a corporate sham with very little of a true community about it.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Yes, I know the mantra. But we're talking about the real-world here. Most companies want to buy their support contracts from the software vendor, and they want to buy them from companies that smell like "real" companies to them. Someone established, who's been around a while. Red Hat passes that test. I'm not aware of any company supporting Ubuntu that does.
and I might agree. For the past 3 years, RedHat's activities have aroused quite a lot of suspicion and consternation. When they had the Desktop market ready for the taking (specially after Lindows aka Linspire bailed out, again suspiciously), RedHat went in for some shady dealings with SCO and generally fizzled out from the Desktop and Home user segment.
Ubuntu has taken these segments by storm, they have drivers for most Big Brand PCs that come with the Built For Windows crap sticker. The laptop segment, which has grown faster than desktops, is again well-served by Ubuntu, and RedHat just doesn't have any mindshare / marketshare on laptops.
Microsoft... well, they seem totally confused with laptops since 2000. The Tablet PC was botched... so many broken standards and half-assed attempts later, nobody seems to know or care what MS intends to do with these things, come Vista. How many laptops are gonna have 128MB VRAM or 2GB RAM on the motherboard? My guess is less than 10% of the market.
While RedHat has carved out it's own space in the server segment and has cut off Microsoft's top-end, Ubuntu has encroached on the lower end Desktops and the Laptops segments. With Vista's hardware specs (let alone drivers) still unknown, with about 6 months left... lack of clarity on certified Vista drivers etc., I think Microsoft has more reasons for worry than RedHat.
My $0.02, of course!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Did anyone actually find a defense of his central argument in that "editorial?" All I saw was a bunch of Mark Shuttleworth cheerleading. Now, here's why he is wrong:
1) RedHat is a large Linux vendor and gives business people someone to deal with reliably.
2) RedHat has an entrenched userbase.
3) RedHat Enterprise Linux is a good distribution in its own right.
4) RedHat has great support from "enterprise vendors" such as Oracle.
RedHat is threatened, but it's manageable. It's the sort of competition that will make them better, not threaten their ability to survive and thrive.
I've used Ubuntu and think it's easy to use and all-around great. That said, I use Redhat and Fedora distributions extensively. I like the amount of big-picture experimentation, cutting-edge tools/libraries, and directly funded improvements (everything from the kernel to eclipse) that make it into the Fedora releases, and I like the known quantity, high-end hardware support, and commitment to long-term maintenance of the Redhat releases.
Friendly rivalries should stay friendly, especially when core foundations of the free software development model are under attack from government mandated and enforced DRM in hardware, extortion threats to the north american internet infrastructure, and increasing attempts to tie popular hardware APIs to closed platforms.
You'll want to download the "Alternate Install CD" instead of the "Desktop CD"
1) Create Linux Distribution ...
2) Gather Community
3) Create Server Version
4) Slashvertise with 'Other Distros Will Die' Prophecy
5)
6) Profit!
Writers call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. For those unaware of the term, it means that if the prophecy had not been spoken, it wouldn't have happened. But the very act of speaking the prophecy sets into motion a chain of events that will eventually cause the prophecy to come true.
I was planning to switch my (messed up) Slackware server to Ubuntu server a while back, but I got lazy. This made me remember that, and got me a little hyped on it again. Until I realized that it was simply a slashvertisement. (Yes, for a free product. Slashdot has sunk low this time.) My fever has abated, but I will still probably work on that tonight.
I noticed ubuntu.com/server wasn't coming up... I'm guessing their own server didn't survive.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
"he told me (something I will always remember) that free things are not good for companies"
Gee, where can I find him, I've got a whole lot of air he can buy or cease using if he feels it doesnt cost enough.
"because it is the total oposite of an economy"
He should probably go back and read a few books on economy again. The ultimate goal of free market capitalism is to encourage the most effective production of 'wealth' possible, with the endgame being the end of scarcity, when more or less everything the average person needs or wants costs close to nothing.
Of course, that is the total opposite of protectionism, where the legal system protects inefficient production from competition.
The economies of opensource are the economies of the free market. As components are perfected and reused and shared, they decrease redundant work and leads to far lower costs for the companies involved; mass-used and distributed code approaches lack of scarcity. At the same time, the costs are shifted into areas that actually do cost; support and other currently labour intensive and not easily automated tasks. The incentive becomes to provide faster better more cost effective support and customization, thus driving along the economic cycle.
"It may not happen in the short term, but .."
It won't happen in the long term either. Yes, Ubuntu is becoming ever more popular, but this is an expanding market. There are new users arriving on the 'Linux' scene every second. Red Hat may not grow at the same pace as Ubuntu in the short, medium, or long term, but it will grow.
All Ubuntu has done has made the competition for new desktop customers more intense. Red Hat will continue to specialise in the server market where it will continue to grow due to providing valued sevice.
Market trends determine the prospects of a company as much as (if not more than) the competition.
Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary
Coming at this from a SysAdmin-who's-never-quite-made-the-switch point of view, there are a lot of us that haven't taken the Linux plunge yet. We fiddle with it and have installed Linux a few times to see what the hype is all about, but at the end of the day we work in a MS World and so we haven't "crossed over" yet. But we know we have to and so we're going to find the easiest, most powerful, and troublefree distro we can find. I recently downloaded Ubuntu 6.06 at the behest of a friend just to see what it looked like and liked it overall. I might even install it and play around with it, which is saying something because I've seen tons of distros that haven't really caught my fancy.
It's a brilliant strategy...one that big bad Microsoft has known for years. Get them hooked on the desktop and they'll go for the server. Ubuntu is just starting out and has nowhere the time in game that Red Hat has, and as such doesn't pose as large a risk as the article might have us believe. But still...it's a deadly strategy they're using and Red Hat (among others) would be wise to take note.
YMMV, but for me, it just so happened that the default set of packages on Ubuntu closely matched what I probably would have installed anyway, if I had known about them. When I began my transition from Windows, I used Debian testing with XFCE on the desktop, and I didn't have the expertise to add the kinds of "polish" that came with Ubuntu by default (like automount/autoplay functionality). It helped too that at the time, Ubuntu's AMD64 version was easier to use than Debian's, and it had more recent packages.
I still don't know what all of those "polish" programs and settings are, and as long as they work I don't care; for me, Ubuntu strikes a perfect balance between the power of Debian and the ease of use of a sandwich.
For one I doubt that a project that has the financial backing of a one man band will knock RH from its throne. Even if the man made $500M (minus the considerable cost of his little trip into space). RH has ten digit assets, a ton of A list partners and it actually has solutions besides the OS. The Enterprise needs solutions. A new kid on the block with a DVD will not cut it with the Global 2000. You need the building blocks that help these players to achieve their objectives. That means professional services, training, 24/7 support, certified hardware and, again, partners that they need to integrate these pretty complex solutions.
Several of Tony's arguments seem to be creative at best and lack substance. Did the packaged version of RH flop? Looking at RH today I tend to disagree as their packaged offering was the precursor of the succesfull business model they now have. It's called Evolution. You try something, shave and mold and hopefully get to a point where it works better. And it seems RH got it right given the fact that they are the leading vendor in this space. Were they too expensive? Well, if something like $100 for a packaged version is too much for a company I think that company should reevaluate their existence. According to Tony the Fedora split was "underfunded and the "community involvement" was patchy and disorganised". Besides the fact that any new project will always have growing pains, in the end it's the result that counts. Maybe Tony should install FC5, subscribe to the mailing lists and browse the ton of helpful websites focused on FC. I did and I see a vibrant community that is delivering a distro that gets better all the time. So in what way did RH "abandoned its desktop audience, to focus on the more lucrative corporate market"? What do you call the free Fedora Core distribution? What do you call the commercial desktop solution that RH offers? Seems they have been successful in sponsoring and creating solutions that will cater to more instead of less.
Tony continues to be creative with his statement that Shuttleworth "divert tons, and tons, and tons of GNU/Linux users away from Red Hat Linux, and towards Ubuntu Linux". Looking at RH's latest quarterly results I don't see them loosing "tons and tons of GNU/Linux users" to Ubuntu. Googling around I found no supporting information about the mass defection of RH customers to Ubuntu like Tony suggests.
All in all Tony has not presented a single fact to support his statements. He only makes bold claims which border on unsubstantiated RH/FC trashing. His feable attempt at writing an "editorial" should be taken with a rock of salt of similar size used for Maureen O'Gara's poo.
I work directly for the CFO.
Me: "I'm thinking of setting up a Linux server for [insert reason here]. RedHat has been the corporate standard, but Ubuntu has better [insert reason here]."
CFO: "Well. (sips coffee, still looking at his computer screen) RedHat I've heard of. Ubuntu? Better stick to Red Hat."
Me: "But Ubuntu has better [insert reason here]."
CFO: "RedHat will be around next year. If you're not around next year, we'll have to find a replacement IT guy that can support Ubuntu. Better stick to RedHat."
He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. -- The Sphinx, Mystery Men
I love business undergrads...they always convienently forget important business theories and principles when it suits them...and then completely miss the point.
The point of the article is clear: Ubuntu will replace Red Hat in the server and desktop market because it is a BETTER product.
Economic Priciple: The 'better' 'cheaper' and 'most efficient' product will be chosen over a clunker.
Here is another economic principle: Free Ridership. Both Ubuntu Desktop and Server are FREE.
And another: Lots of money can be made by creating a value added service to a free/cheap product. (Eg. Tech Support...letting cattle graze on BLM land)
Your point: Switching infrastructure takes lots of effort.
My point: Its worth the effort to switch to Ubuntu at this point, given the drawbacks of RedHat, which I am not going to list here.
on Ubuntu, I won't be installing anything but CentOS and RedHat 4 on my servers. I installed Ubuntu on my brand new laptop and I run it on my desktop mind you.
Yes, IBM DB2, is certified to run on Ubuntu and IBM will support it. Same thing for MySQL but until something like Tivoli Storage Manager or WebSphere Application Server or BEA or any other host of products are certified and are listed as "supported configurations" by vendors, Ubuntu will only be for non-commerical applications in the corporate world.
Our model is RedHat for stuff that requires a support contract (WebSphere, TSM) and CentOS for development boxes or things like our Apache servers, CUPS servers and what not. It provides the same interface and knowledge as the RHEL stuff so there's no need to document something different.
I honestly think what's going to eat RHAT's lunch in the smaller markets is CentOS.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
If your desktop is configured and working as you want to there is no real reason to switch. For me, the reason to switch to Ubuntu on the desktop is that just about everything (except media codecs and flash on x86_64) works out of the box and is nicely configured. If I put my iPod in it will ask if I want to open Rhythmbox, just mount it or ignore it. If I connect an external USB drive it will mount and open in Nautilus. I get a great (perfectly and working!) interface to install patches and updates, very similar to Windows' automatic updates. The proprietary NVidia driver is already installed by default, I just have to run "nvidia-xconfig" to activate it. etc... Just less fiddling.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
There is another major reason too. Third party support. Companies like IBM, HP, EMC (both the SAN part and VMWare), Veritas (Symantec), etc. feel MUCH more comfortable releasing driver / application packages for a distro that has a real company behind it that is "enterprise" oriented. This basically means that they support RedHat and Suse. Lucky for me, CentOs works as a RedHat replacement in all cases.
It also has to do with enterprise deployment. When Debian / Ubunto gets to similar levels as RedHat in the enterprise, we will start to see support for it.