Red Hat to Enter the Desktop Market

head_dunce writes "It looks like Red Hat is going to release their Global Desktop Linux in September and give Ubuntu a challenge for the Linux desktop market. Red Hat Global Desktop 'would be sold with a one-year subscription to security updates.'" It looks like another choice for the proverbial Aunt Tillie. The release is being delayed in order to provide greater media compatibility, "to permit users to view a wide range of video formats on their computers."

Comments

A day late and a dollar short.

[gumpish]

Red Hat Global Desktop 'would be sold with a one-year subscription to security updates.'

Hmmm, let's see... on the one hand I can start paying for updates after 12 months.... on the other hand I get free updates for 18 months (or 36 months for LTS releases).

Maybe the execs at Red Hat need to update their hat size as whatever they're wearing appears to be cutting off circulation to their brains.

Re:A day late and a dollar short.

[rudegeek]

Hmmm, let's see... on the one hand I can start paying for updates after 12 months.... on the other hand I get free updates for 18 months (or 36 months for LTS releases).

Yes, but maybe, just maybe, you'll get some form of support except packages update? You know? Ability to call call center or whatever? I was never a RH follower but I say, give them a benefit of doubt in their desktop market reapperance.

I want to see more good offering on Linux desktop. And RH has muscle to push some changes. They have quite a good brand and following of loyal customers in a business setting.

Maybe the execs at Red Hat need to update their hat size as whatever they're wearing appears to be cutting off circulation to their brains.

I invite you to do grep -r "@redhat.com" . in few bigger FOSS projects. Yeah, I bet they are all stupid. Running so big FOSS-based company. How do they feed them self? Amazing!

Re:A day late and a dollar short.

[mikael]

Hmmm, let's see... on the one hand I can start paying for updates after 12 months.... on the other hand I get free updates for 18 months (or 36 months for LTS releases).

Business people like accountability, and the ability to see that a problem is under control. Being able to
tell them that you have arranged for a field engineer scheduled to visit, or that the support team is working on the problem, is more reassuring to them than saying that that you have sent out an E-mail to a discussion group to see if anyone else has had a similar problem. To them, either you are the person to fix the problem or you can't.

Re:A day late and a dollar short.

[squiggleslash]

That's right. We should all try to price everything identically and then somehow end up with choices of different products and services that cater to different needs despite all of that.

Well, maybe not. Perhaps we should see what RedHat plans to produce that justifies the expense. Me, personally, I've subscribed to pay services in lieu of free services because I felt the pay service was worth spending money on, it wasn't excessively priced, and I'd rather support an organization dedicated to providing me with a service than one that ultimately is responsible only to itself, or to a myriad of advertisers with their own agendas.

I'm not knocking Ubuntu, and without seeing RedHat's product, it's impossible for me to judge as to whether it'll be worth the money, but the notion that we can make that judgement right now purely on the basis of cost per month of service is ridiculous.

Re:A day late and a dollar short.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain why businesses use windows then. There is ZERO accountability for microsoft products, you agree to hold them harmless and agree that the software comes with no warranty or accountability when you install it.

Are you telling me that businesspeople are not reading that and are operating under the false assumption that there is accountability with microsoft products?

there is MORE accountability with Ubuntu than there is with windows XP or Vista. Just because most It support companies (Like Next IT, Geek Squad, Geeks on site) have incredibly under trained staff does not mean that they are the only source for support. Before I left comcast we were actively looking for Linux trained and experience, and we were getting lots of people with linux abilities applying. Most of the mpeg2 digital equipment in the head ends runs linux. from the combiners to the routers to the encoders for local off the air. All of it runs linux, which upset the heads of IT quite a bit.

Linux skilled techs exist out there for support, yes they are more expensive than the barely capable larger IT support companies that can install virus scan and spend 2 hours fixing a simple networking issue. but you get what you pay for.

Re:A day late and a dollar short.

[JimDaGeek]

There is accountability because managers and execs can bypass blame and point right to Microsoft or another vendor. If they were to do that with a Free OS like Ubuntu, the blame comes back to them for "using something that was free to try to save money". Note, I don't agree with this stupidity, but it seems pervasive in American management.

I cut my teeth on Red Hat and like the way it is set up. The only reason I started to use Ubuntu more is because of how vast the repository is and how well all the packages play together. With Fedora, you can add 3rd party repositories, but you will run in to conflicts. This is the only reason I dropped Fedora for Ubuntu.

I say give Red Hat a chance and wait and see how it turns out. If they include LEGAL codecs, that could be huge. With Ubuntu to play proprietary audio/video codecs you have to use unauthorized software. To a home user this isn't a bid deal, but to companies it is a deal breaker. Most license holders won't go after Joe Linux User for using an MP3 codec. However, with a company, that could lead to some nice cash for infringement.

Re:A day late and a dollar short.

[Etyenne]

According to TFA, Red Hat is targetting public administration and small business in developing countries. This is a very price-conscious market. If the only competitive advantage they have over the competition (Ubuntu, pirated Windows, etc) is that they offer some warm-and-fuzzy feeling that the product is supported by a corporation, they are doomed to fail. Canonical already offer support à la carte (you buy support only if you need it), which make Red Hat Global Desktop compulsory subscription a fairly though sell.

Red Hat (and Novell) strategy of charging per-seat "subscription" is doomed to fail on the desktop. Really, this is paramount to the proprietary software business model of charging licensing fees per seat. And why would anybody choose to engage a recurring cost for an *operating system* is beyond me (but then, people flocked to "Software Assurance", go figure). To have any chance, they would need to charge very little for this "subscription", which raise the question of profitability. Maybe they would have a chance if they where giving away these desktop "subscriptions" to existing customers of RHEL as a perk.

Red Hat never understood the Linux desktop market, and apparently never will. It is a good thing they dominate a profitable niche in replacing Solaris as a platform to run Oracle and other enterprise software, because they completely suck at market development. I would hate them to go away; they are very goods corporate Open-Source citizens that contributes significantly to key Open-Source project, so I hope this niche will not dry up in the near future.

As a side note, if you think Red Hat can afford to dispatch a field engineer for desktop problem on the premise of a small business customer, your expectations need a little adjustment.

Re:A day late and a dollar short.

[init100]

Canonical has done a great job of building a community that is loyal

A community that happily piss on other Linux users because they are not using Ubuntu. That is quite a strong turn-off.

It would be one thing if they were few and far between, but every time there is a story about a non-Ubuntu distro, there are a whole lot of comments like

Are they still alive? Why the heck are those users not using Ubuntu instead? Ubuntu FTW! Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu!

and

The problem with <distro XXXX> is that it isn't Ubuntu.

Re:A day late and a dollar short.

[Sillygates]

Red Hat developers contribute to various open source projects and make almost half the patches to the kernel.

Ubuntu on the other hand doesn't even make their own packages: They repackage debian ones in most cases.

If you want to get phone support Canonical also charges money, but very little of that goes to bettering open source projects.

Re:A day late and a dollar short.

[VON-MAN]

Red Hat developers made almost half of the kernel patches? Well, that's stretching it a bit.

Luckily, Jonathan Corbet did two excellent pieces on this matter on LWN:http://lwn.net/Articles/222773/ and http://lwn.net/Articles/224244/. These show that Red Hat is there in the top with Intel, IBM, Novell and the Linux Foundation. FYI

Re:A day late and a dollar short.

[mlts]

There is another reason too, and one that is a major factor of why Windows is a corporate staple: Due diligence with corporate regulations.

Windows is certified, both in FIPS and Common Criteria. This allows corporate legal, should something happen, show the auditors, press, and possibly law enforcement (as some SOX or HIPAA violations mean prison time) documentation that every piece of the system, from the OS on up, is certified secure.

Few operating systems have these certifications other than Windows. Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX do, because it costs a lot of cash to pass the OS in front of certifying bodies for approval. Even fewer operating systems intended for the desktop have this.

Redhat does. This positions Redhat in a place that very few desktop operating systems are qualified (and this is not a technical or quality item, but a presence/absence of very expensive papers with signatures. I'm pretty sure that any UNIX variant out there can easily qualify for FIPS 141-1 certification.) Apple states on their website (http://www.apple.com/itpro/federal/) that they have Common Criteria validation, but FIPS certification is still in the works. Even though pretty much any UNIX based OS can technically support FIPS, its having the certification that is critical, so companies can show to their internal auditors (and the SEC) that due diligence is being followed.

Regardless of which distribution of Linux people advocate, having another option on corporate desktops is a plus for everybody.

More choice

[bvimo]

Another quality distro for the desktop is good news.

Re:More choice

[siride]

Compared to DEB, RPM is a much superior format. The problem with RPM is not RPM itself but the idiots who try to use the rpm command-line tool like apt-get and then complain when it doesn't do what they expect it to do (because that's not what it's supposed to do). You are supposed to use "yum", which works just like apt-get. It even lets you install RPMs that you've already downloaded. E.g. "yum localinstall foo.rpm". It will even download dependencies for you! It's also really fast in fc6 and f7.

The only negative I can see is that there aren't as many packages available in the Fedora repositories. That's hardly a fault of RPM, though.

Re:More choice

[rudegeek]

RPM is not a distro, for fuck sake. It's a package format. You know? Files and metadata? Can we stop this 'RPM is bad, think about children!' stuff?

Old RPM tools had problems, sure. But new package manager was developed past last few years. They do mostly what APT do. Yet, you're still confused abut APT/Yum(or whatever) and .deb/.rpm

/. should be filled with people aware of difference between package format and package manager, or am I wrong?

Re:More choice

[marcello_dl]

And both ubuntu and red hat desktop linux having no pact with microsoft is good news too.

Re:More choice

[free space]

[rant]

The last desktop version I used for RedHat was 8.0
It was horrible. While SuSE and Mandrake were becoming more and more desktop friendly, RedHat was still stuck in the late 90's era look and feel.

The problem? RedHat was the defacto Linux standard and every Linux advocate I know recommended it instead of the more friendly options. I believe this drove a lot of potential Linux users away and gave the idea that Linux was ugly and unusable.

[/rant]

I haven't used later versions of RH or Fedora so all this might have changed. But if RH want to get back to the Desktop game, I hope they learn a lesson from all the other user friendly distributions and provide something more than a sever OS disguised as a desktop OS this time.

Re:More choice

[KingSkippus]

Well, that's true, but I also think that part of the problem is people who create packages that don't understand how to use RPM. I can't tell you how many times I've seen installation instructions that include things like "use --force to bypass the version checking..."

Of course, then we get into how complicated RPM is for normal software developers to use. I mean, just because I write awesome nifty C++ code doesn't mean I'm an expert in RPM. (Nor should it, really.)

What we need is a way for installation configuration to be simplified both for end users and developers. I can't tell you how many times I've churned out some widget to do something and ended up spending more time tweaking installation packages than I did on writing the thing it was installing.

Re:More choice

[siride]

But he never said that they would have to with RPM either. All he said is that they could use --define on the rpmbuild command line to pass in information to the specfile, which is free to interpret that information however it wishes, including, but not limited to, modifying configure flags.

They better hurry

[dybdahl]

It seems Ubuntu is capturing all attention right now:

http://google.com/trends?q=suse%2Cfedora%2Cubuntu% 2Cgentoo%2Credhat&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Re:They better hurry

[__aajwxe560]

Of course it doesn't help with the Apple-like secrecy the company seems to be putting around the product (an attempt to try and drum up interest?). I work with their products everyday, and this is the first I have even heard of this. Their own web site only seems to have a single press release from back in May (http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2007/g lobal_desktop.html). For an open source company, no alphas, no betas, no hints as to what sets it apart from their new Red Hat 5 Linux Desktop (http://www.redhat.com/rhel/desktop/)? I suspect it includes Mugshot and a few other consumer'ish goodies, but with so little info, who really knows.

RedHat Panic

[Anonymous Coward]

This has "OMG Ubunutu is getting so much press, we need some of that action quick or they'll own the market!" panic written all over it.

Wake Us Up When...

[Anonymous Coward]

Redhat, when you actually sit down and do the real work to bring Linux up to the level of commercial desktops and not just another halfassed repackaging of your existing Linux distro people will actually give a damn.

Here you go Redhat:

http://www.fayerwayer.com/archivo/2005/03/tiger_sc reen.jpg

* Perfect desktop acceleration right out of the box with the user having to touch NOTHING to get it to work

* Application packages in /Applications or something similar

* Full drag and drop application installation and removal

* OS X level or font rendering support right out of the box

* IB equivalent complete with auto spacing and hints so developers can finally make Linux apps that aren't jarring to the eye

* Complete set of iApp replacements - same visual polish and features sets as Apple has - plug in a digital camera, it just works

* And the thousands of other things that make buying a commercial desktop worth the money

What's that Redhat? That would actually require work and lots of hard choices?

That's what we thought...

Re:Wake Us Up When...

[MrHanky]

Application folders and "drag and drop installation" won't work on Linux, as you can't know which libraries are installed on the computer, and in which version. Say you want to install the Kword 2.0 beta. This depends on the kdelibs 4.0 (beta) and the Koffice libs. With an app folder approach, the Kword 2.0 beta would have to package those libraries as well. And so would all the other apps depending on those libraries. Or, of course, they could all be one huge package with lots of stuff you don't need.

There is another approach, of course, which is that of Apple: You know mostly which libraries are installed on the system, since they are all part of the OS, but when there is an application depending on a newer version of the libraries, you have to pay Apple for a newer version of the whole OS as well. This is easy enough if you have a monopoly on that particular platform, but then you also have a proprietary platform. Red Hat doesn't have that privilege.

What you want is obviously a Mac. Then get a Mac.

Re:Wake Us Up When...

[ciroknight]

"Application folders and "drag and drop installation" won't work on Linux..."

I think what you meant to say was "that won't work across Linux OSes." It'd work perfectly fine for one distro, or one distro-family based on one common repository that is in lock-step for API/ABI compatibility. It'd work perfectly fine in the Ubuntu family of OSes, for example, but take that same package and try to install it on, let's say Red Hat, and it all goes out the window.

Believe it or not, we've already solved this problem with Package Management. Whether we dress up the package as a nice little icon, or we put its name in a list with hundreds of others, or allow you to install it through the command line just by knowing its name, it really doesn't make any difference at all. Synaptic could have just as easily worked by adding icons for each of the programs it allows to be installed, and letting you drag them over into some "Applications" folder, and have it in the background run all of the necessary steps to install that application. It doesn't really matter how you present it to the user, just as long as it's friendly and very easy to use.

CentOS

[dkleinsc]

And how long before CentOS creates a perfect replica thanks to the GPL?

Re:CentOS

[lordtoran]

These "clones" don't threaten Red Hat's business, because they don't come with these all-in-one support options that businesses love. Plus they have to contribute modified code back, so it's even a kind of win-win situation.

Re:CentOS

[Pharmboy]

And how long before RedHat back pedals and screws us, like they did those of us who bought support contracts for RH9? Sorry, we have several servers with paid support that just got stranded, and then given the choice of paying 5 times more, or using Fedora, which isn't ready and had spotty support after a year.

No, I think not RedHat. I got to explain to the owner why you left me high and dry once. Never again. I will keep using CentOS because I was weened on RH, gladly paying for the box set of every major release since 4.x because I wanted to support FOSS and still do. I pay others when I need a second opinion, or just in over my head on a particular want/desire, but not RedHat.

This always hits a nerve with me, and thousands of us who were abandoned by RH the first go around. We were loyal small server users for many years, then was told to 'eat cake', and choke on Fedora we did.

All I want in a linux distro is...

[jonwil]

A linux distro where I can download an ISO and install from that ISO and get a version of ffmpeg and friend that doesn't have 90% of the media formats disabled.

Re:All I want in a linux distro is...

[siride]

Talk to the patent owners or the legal system, not the distros. They're just doing what they have to do.

Re:All I want in a linux distro is...

[BlueParrot]

A linux distro where I can download an ISO and install from that ISO and get a version of ffmpeg and friend that doesn't have 90% of the media formats disabled.

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn gets pretty much as close as is possible within legal limits. From the documentation:

Click Applications Add/Remove. In the top right, change the setting to All available applications. Then select Other in the left panel and then select the Ubuntu restricted extras package. Click OK.

This will install a whole lot of crap that is restricted by software patents (mp3 support etc ), or stuff that isn't completely free ( like Flash and Sun Java ). Unfortunately it isn't possible for the distros to have this installed by default because the US patent and copyright system is completely broken.

Re:All I want in a linux distro is...

[jez9999]

Unfortunately it isn't possible for the distros to have this installed by default because the US patent and copyright system is completely broken.

Couldn't they install it by default for non-US regional releases?

Oh, so NOW they're going to be entering the market

[Bandman]

I wonder what the last 8 years have been?

Not necessarily

[KingSkippus]

This isn't necessarily true.

As an extreme example, look at all the choices in Microsoft's lineup. I've said it before on here, but as "the computer guy" that my friends and family turn to for advice, I wanted to kill them when they had out two versions named Windows 2000 and Windows Millennium Edition. Sure, I know the difference, but I'm paid good money to know these things. I had friends who were actually considering "upgrading" from Windows 2000 to Windows ME until I told them what a hideous idea that was.

I'm all for choices for the educated public and competition to keep the desktop Linux market on their toes, but for typical non-gurus, I'm really hoping that one distribution makes it as the clear desktop distribution leader.

(And personally, I hope and think that it will be Ubuntu. It's a lot more intuitive to use than RedHat, IMHO, and I have a lot of respect for Mark Shuttleworth.)

The irony

[sarathmenon]

Alan Cox and the other big shots at Redhat have in the past repeatedly said that they will not add support for mp3, or any other patended technology into Redhat. It all started with 8.0, and RH's policy has been AFAIK to tell the user that so-and-so will never be supported until the patent expires. Its sad to see such a good ideaology been tossed aside because of market pressure.

Whatever, I am not one to complain, but given the way Bluecurve was thrust upon users, and the way that they crippled kde so that gnome looks better (I dont want to start a holy flame war, but this *was* the state of things 5-6 years ago), I doubt whether they will make any serious dent in the market. But this is free software, the more people focussing on an area usually only brings the better - atleast its going to be code that others can use too.

Re:The irony

[sarathmenon]

the way that they crippled kde so that gnome looks better (I dont want to start a holy flame war, but this *was* the state of things 5-6 years ago),

No it wasn't. It was a complaint made by many who never used it.

It's not true, and never was true.

And I've been using KDE with Redhat (and now Fedora) since '99 I'll bite on that one. Please explain then why this site came up, and why it had an active user and devel base. Fedora when it was at core 1 or 2 realized the mistake redhat was doing by crippling kde, and they started including the default packages with less modifications. In case you wanted a list of stuff that were removed out - they were xine-lib support for kde-libs, arts threading, a lot of the standard applications, custom modifying a few kde headers (this caused problems for me while trying to compile kbear 2.0 at that time).

I remember all of this because I was a redhat fan since 6.0. But RH 8.0 drove me too crazy within the first month that I switched to mdk9. It may have worked for you, and I am not nitpicking you as a user. But there were a large number of users like me who were frustrated, a lot of them swicthed distros, some of them started using the unsupported packages from kde-redhat. The fact that there were a lot of discontented users atleast shows that there was a problem somewhere.

Beyond the average user

[HangingChad]

The release is being delayed in order to provide greater media compatibility

As much as I like Ubuntu, getting some of the media types working was a royal pain. The average user would have difficulty and they certainly don't understand the legal reasons for the exclusion.

Proprietary file formats are from the devil.

Re:Beyond the average user

[Constantine XVI]

Don't know if you've used 7.04 (Feisty) yet, but they've made codec installation as simple as:
1) Attempt to play file
2) codec-buddy pops up and tells you what you need to install
3) Press OK, read applicable legal crap
4) Type in your password to install the software
5) Go!

Uh oh

[DogDude]

This isn't a good sign. They just got finished dumping their desktop version, and now they're making another one? Sounds like their management is starting to flounder. Either they're a desktop software company, or they're not. They've already left the market, and only a few years later, they're re-inventing the wheel to get back in? That's crazy. It reminds me of Sun "The network is the computer. No it's not." Microsystems.

Excellent News

[ratboy666]

This will be accepted as a "tier 1" supported platform by ATI, nVidia, and other "binary only" vendors immediately.

Basing on Redhat/Fedora/RHEL means a lot of stabilty. Having "legal" video support in a different branch means that Fedora can pursue the free software goal without being distracted by critics calling for non-free features. "Fedora sucks - it doesn't do MP3 and DVD out of the box" goes away (hopefully). The answer becomes "If you want non-free, go Global".

I hate the name, though. Indeed, Global will be a competitor to Ubuntu, but I would much rather have a "hat" name. From the summary, I would recommend Tilley.

Re:Excellent News

[ScrewMaster]

Well, here are some possible alternates:

Bonnet Linux
Hood Linux
Cap Linux
Balmoral Linux
Nightcap Linux
Yamulke Linux
Beaver Linux (Slashdot favorite)
Deerstalker Linux
Porkpie Linux
Tophat Linux
Beret Linux
Bowler Linux
Derby Linux
Headgear Linux
Cummerbund Linux
Beanie Linux
Homburg Linux
Pointy Linux
Slouchhat Linux
Trilby Linux
Bandana Linux
Visor Linux
Skullcap Linux
Space Helmet Linux
Gas Mask Linux
Beehive Linux
Newport Linux
Helmet Linux
Tricorne Linux
Hardhat Linux

Re:Excellent News

[6031769]

I hate to be the one to have to tell you, but that is not where your cummerbund should be.

Page 2 of the article is so lame

[tiananmen tank man]

It contains 1 sentence from the story and a big page of other stuff.

Deja Vu

[spiritraveller]

I seem to recall Red Hat already being in the desktop market at one point.

Didn't they basically throw it away already?

Isn't the reason why Ubuntu was able to take the lead was because Red Hat left a huge gaping hole in the category of "Most Popular Desktop Linux Distro?"

Re:Deja Vu

[Etyenne]

The reasons Ubuntu came to dominate the market is multi-folds.

First, they pionneered three keys Linux distributions improvements: single ISO installer, clean desktop and LiveCD.

People seem to have forgotten that, but back when Ubuntu 4.10 came out, you needed to download *5* ISO to install Fedora (I think you could have gotten away with three if you did the minimal install, but whatever). This was an absolutely horrible experience for Linux first-timer and an important barrier to adoption.

You also have to remember that the Linux desktop in 2004 was quite busy and not very sleek. And quite frankly, Fedora default theme back then was quite ugly (the Gnome/KDE unified theme, cannot remember the name). In contrast, Ubuntu was quite slick, as long as you liked brown. The Gnome-only policy also made it look very well-integrated, and the menus where clear and concise. It was the most Mac-like distro back then.

As for LiveCD, it was really pionneered by Gentoo (credit where due), but I think combined with the two advantages above, significantly contributed to lower the bar for Ubuntu newcomers.

There are other non-obvious reasons why Ubuntu came to dominate the Linux desktop. First and foremost was (and still is) community advocacy. This can be explained by three reasons: a genuinely open development community, a charismatic leader and ShipIt.

The Ubuntu community is, as far as I know, the only Open-Source community that actively try to recruit non-developers and give them the same status as core devs. This made a lot of advocates flock to Ubuntu, as they felt respected and welcomed, where their contribution are considered minor at best (and often seen as distracting or annoying) in other distro's community. These advocate started Local Community Team, got peoples involved in translation and documentation, etc. Democratic and civil community governance mechanisms (the Community Council and the Code of Conduct, among others) kept them under the fold of the community. AFAIK, Ubuntu have been the best and most successful community-building experience in Open-Source.

Leadership is also an important facet of Ubuntu success. Who is the leader of Fedora, or OpenSuse, or Gentoo ? Nobody know outside of their community. A charismatic spokeperson who can make headlines is very useful in spreading the word. And, in Open-Source, a clear leadership is vastly better than a purely democratic and collegial form of governance, which tend to lose focus or spend too much time in unproductive flamewars (witness: Debian). Ubuntu stuck just the right balance of benevolent dictatorship and community governance.

The importance of ShipIt in Ubuntu is fairly obvious. It got Ubuntu in the hands of people who could not have it otherwise. Plus, it's easier to have someone give a spin to Linux if you hand them a nice, professionally made CD with a cool jacket than if you hand them a CD-R with "Fedora CD 1 of 5" scribbled to it. It must have costed Shuttleworth is metric truckload of money to support ShipIt so far, but it bought him the dominant poistion in the market.

There are more reasons why Ubuntu kicked the ass of others Linux distros in the market, but this post is already long enough.

YALD

[wwmedia]

we dont need Yet Another Linux Distro, there are plenty already! we need them developers join a bigger project like Ubuntu and Suse and not reinvent the wheel over and over

Er.. Red Hat Enterprise Desktop with multimedia?

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

What is the news here? Red Hat is in the desktop market already, thought their offering is more geared or at least branded for the enterprise use: Red Hat Enteprise Linux 5 Desktop. It seems that they are just going to brand their Enterprise Desktop, add some multimedia and maybe a new colorful GNOME theme and call it Global Desktop Linux. Whoah!

The real news in here I would say is that Red Hat is gearing towards other than corporate customers. The question is, is this a defensive maneuver against Canonical or does Red Hat see that the consumer desktop linux market could be opening up? Or is it both? Could be both.

The second question, if they are not doing this purely for playing defense, is how serious they are? Are they so serious that they will maybe make a new multimedia player for Linux, or will they bundle in example iTunes or Real with it, or are they just going to hack up the usual suspects. I really would hope that they have something new to offer, as basically the situation is that multimedia support works but is not plea sent. Peasent here means the same as user experience with iTunes and in less extend Windows Media is.

"LTS" is Long Term Support.

[khasim]

It's from Ubuntu.

You can pay for per-incident support from Canonical. Or you can purchase a support contract from them.

Either way, it's as good as what Red Hat is offering ... or better. And it's already established. And it's a very popular desktop distribution.

Re:"LTS" is Linux Terminal Server

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of Linux Terminal Server, but Ubuntu definitely uses "LTS" to mean "Long Term Support." From their site, "The 'LTS' version of Ubuntu receives long-term support. 3 years for desktop versions and 5 years for server versions."

Re:"LTS" is Linux Terminal Server

[Lumpy]

Linux terminal server...

http://www.ltsp.org/ the core project.
http://www.k12ltsp.org/ a turnkey setup for schools just add crappy old throw away PC's and you have instant terminals for that one fast server.
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/linux _terminal_server TCO breakdown and executive overview of the above.

Implimenting a Linux terminal server environment is 90000% easier than citrix or windows, and is far FAR more stable. Many schools and business use such a setup. Autozone uses Linux terminal server in every store.

Ubuntu is getting more attention than even God!

[baboonlogic]

http://google.com/trends?q=God%2C+Ubuntu&ctab=0&ge o=all&date=all&sort=0

google confirms it!

Re:"LTS" is Linux Terminal Server

[Lumpy]

Yes yes I have I managed a citrix farm of 5 servers for 4 years. I set it up I managed it daily I even set up the replacement upgraded servers before I left. Citrix server failovers rarely work right and a host of other problems that cause pain and misery. The windows terminal servers suck WAY more than citrix in every way. When I helped set up 15 LTS servers for 3 schools I could not believe how incredibly easy it was. I went over it for 2 more days wanting to know if we missed anything, we didn't. they are that easy. Almost every single Linux app is written for server use and multi-user. Almost NO windows apps are written that way and cause hell and heartache under a citrix setup.

Citrix SUCKS compared to LTS hands down.

still waiting...

[Anonymous Coward]

for one linux to rule them all and in the darkness bind them