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Red Hat Develops Online Desktop
pete314 writes "Red Hat announced this week at their San Diego Red Hat Summit that they are planning to compete with Microsoft on the desktop by building an 'online desktop' that will integrate local data with online services. Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens argued that: 'To user the desktop metaphor is dead. We don't believe that recreating a Windows paradigm in an open source model will do anything to advance the productivity in the life of users.'"
Are they really competing with Microsoft at this point? As far as I can see Google offer replacements for an increasing amount of desktop software at the moment (Word processor, Spreadsheet, Email, Calendar, Photo management, IM, and various browser integrations such as their note-taking plugin for Firefox. That's a bit more than Microsoft has to offer at the moment.
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I do like the aspect of some apps being hosted online versus locally as it frees up a portion of your HDD, but before I commit fully to this idea I have to bring into question data security and bandwidth on this one. I know there is more bandwidth to come and that is simply a matter of time, but implementing an online desktop could potentially bring some big security issues into play.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
And therefore they're reimplementing the Windows 98 Active Desktop...?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Often I use my laptop in the subway. Guess what? No internet access. So how would I perform my work with such a paradigm? What about when you go to your country house, in the woods? To user the desktop metaphor is not dead when offline.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Quick - someone tell Apple that they're DOOMED!
I mean, they do a lot of development, and they are the OSS company most trusted by Fortune 500's, but I think they lost their leadership position to Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu. Not trying to start a flamewar here, but they seem to be fresh out of ideas at present, and this seems to be grasping at straws.
After dealing with their nightmarish support system this month after a bug caused me to lose connection to my SAN, and dealing with the scam that is RHCE certification (30% pass rate is BS -- they're just milking retakes at $750 a pop), I can say that Red hat is really going downhill fast. They're becoming more and more focused on the bottom line and less on the little guy who got them to where they are.
I love it (ironic) when some CIO or other bigwig perports to talk for me. Actually, not only is the desktop still not "dead", but on my desktop is a Mainframe running COBOL/CICS/DB2. Still not dead. Not by a long shot.
Hello, world.
Storing your own data locally on your own computer and manipulating it with local apps may be "old thinking", but at least it puts you in control. Just when a critical mass of free (as in freedom) software is emerging, Red Hat is talking about services. I suspect it's impossible to make these services free as in freedom.
The network desktop has been tried many times in the past, by Microsoft (badly) with "ActiveDesktop" and in theory with XAML and .NET, and by Sun in various forms. All the efforts I've seen so far just don't cut it. That doesn't mean it isn't a good idea -- I think there's real promise in a distributed approach to the desktop -- just that it is hard to execute well. Stumbling blocks in the past have included: a lack of real network transparency (the "online" aspect was a thin veneer rather than being truly transparent); lack of sufficient bandwidth (all the "online" stuff was pitifully slow, and ignored); and security, security, security.
To succeed you need a system that doesn't view the network as a bolted on thing, but integrates it at the core; Plan9 comes to mind on that front. At least X11 has network transparency, but it needs to be more efficient (think NX), and have far better security built in to really work for this. Bandwidth will slowly but surely fix itself. That leaves security -- and there's a lot required to make that happen. It is an ambitious and worthy goal, but in this case it is possibly a case of biting off more than you can chew: if it isn't transparent, efficient and secure, it isn't going anywhere, and fulfilling those requirements would require vast architectural changes.
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Linux has a reasonably big marketshare in the server market share [Netcraft Survey]. However it is still waiting for the day when it will be accepted in the Home PC market as a strong competitor for the Windows family of OSes. I am a strong fan of Linux and I have been trying to promote Linux in my market but people still refuse to accept it open heartedly. In spite of detailed explanations and demos people are hesitant. I even offer free linux installation assistance for people who already own computers. People still look at Linux with scepticism. I think it would have been much better if more effort is put into making linux acceptable for a wider audience. Though I personally disagree I have to agree with what the market is saying - that Linux is still an operating system for the geeks.
I like what ubuntu is doing - ie making the whole Linux experience easier and better for a common man. In a country like India where I live we are talking about 800 million people whom we can identify with the common man. 2/3 of the world ie 4 billion could be classified with these. We need Linux to target this market. We need Linux to focus on making the Linux experience much more comfortable for these people. We need more effort to be put into creating Linux drivers for the hardware that are not yet Linux compatible. We need easier installations for a larger number of applications.
I am not too excited about the proposition other than as an useful feature for a small percentage of the whole world.
"Be the change you wish to see in the world" - M. K. Gandhi
They may not end up competing with Google, rather they may end up partnering with Google. Google has a lot of the apps available right now.
Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu are great. They spread non-Free firmware and drivers. Awesome. That's what I call leadership. What's this deal that Canonical is doing with Linspire, Microsoft, Dell and Novell?
Order a free CD from Ubuntu and bin it.
This is absolutely the right step for our increasingly connected world - but the devil is in the details as usual.
... just doing "XP the right way" is not a path to success for Linux. The Linux industry is very nimble compared to Microsloth ... lets see what this baby can really do !
The desktop isn't dead but its damn stale - what I would envision is a bi-modal operation: if you have wired or wireless access your "desktop" seamlessly includes your "on-line" resources - applications - data files - links - IM buddies - etc. all integrated into your applications - disk volumes, When offline you would have what you have right now. Of course you would need a method to mark certian files as bi-modal so they would reside in a file cache and be available offline - the OS would handle file sync'ing etc. Or a thumb drive could be a file cache
On the flip side where the desktop is really dead (as in "Dead to You" ) --- I could see you carrying a USB thumb drive that launches a mini-linux session and then you connect to the "server in the sky" to access all your docs - email - applications - etc.
Both ideas are step in the right direction for Linux
Its not the years, its the mileage
I have no interest whatsoever.
When I was actively doing business travel, online collaborative apps were a supplement to applications on the desktop, given that the online apps were trustworthy (controlled by my own business). I never had any desire to get rid of local applications, especially since I had to be able to do office work, development and other tasks on the go, with no network access, expensive network access, insecure network access, or unreliable network access. If the "network applications" are downloadable and cached for off-line use, then you have nothing new, that's just semi-automated deployment and update. When it comes to that, externally controlled auto-update is a bad thing in many environments. I want to control when I upgrade, after I know the update is not going to break something. I don't want to log on, find out I can't access an old file, and have no way to restore the previous version of the application. Web services are continuously in beta.
Currently, I have absolutely no need for remote apps. I do all of my work locally and live rurally. Why would I want my applications and/or data externally controlled and unaccessible if I don't have a connection? I have full-featured applications (which would take considerable time to download). I pay for them once (if I have to at all). I have low latency. I can pick and choose which applications I use. I can have multiple versions installed if I need to for compatibility reasons. I control encryption and backups when I need it. What advantage does a "network desktop" get me?
Why bother?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
FTFA: "The Linux desktop market has been limited to single function devices such as cash registers and applications in emerging markets." I've heard this term 'emerging markets' for so long now, you'd think they'd have emerged by now...
The network is the machine.
Yeah, I know Sun came up with that one a decade or so ago, and they were spot on, but it wasn't quite there.
The real winners will be the ones who can come up with transparent computing. By that, I mean if the machine is standalone it uses local resources, disk, cpu etc. If it's plugged into a network it automatically makes use of the best available hardware on the LAN.
It's all so manual at the moment.
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If the desktop metaphor is dead, why is its replacement called the "online desktop"?
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
I've always thought rather than having local OR remote, a hybrid approach would be nice. Something like the way exchange works. You have the desktop client; but if you are away you can log into the web client. The data is available in both places. It would seem to me that such a concept could be used for other things.
I suppose it would require implementing clients twice. I think though, that I would prefer a more accessible system with fewer features rather than a new Office sweet every few years (or whatever other apps may be applicable)
While I might be missing something, this sounds kind of like Adobe's Apollo software idea.
This would be like having a version of Google Docs that actually was installed on your computer, but communicated with a server in order to store your data. For an organization the end user wouldn't be able to tell the difference, besides the speed of the software.
I think the closest thing that this would resemble are Microsoft's roaming profiles, but in a way that actually worked.
By having a copy on the machine for speed and a golden copy on a server for backup purposes, there would be the ability to move away from the idea of "my desktop" so that no matter what machine the user was on, they would have all of the same programs and info that they normally had on their personal computer.
Another thing to remember (when comparing this to "services" as we know them now) if this was an Open Source project, it would be easier for individual organizations (or even individuals) to setup their own servers to store this information.
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