Red Hat Returns To the Linux Desktop

CWmike writes "Red Hat used to be in the desktop business along with all the other Linux distributors. Then, they left. Now, however, Red Hat is switching from Xen to KVM for virtualization. As part of that switchover, Red Hat will be using not only KVM, but the SolidICE/SPICE desktop virtualization and management software suite to introduce a new server-based desktop virtualization system. Does this mean that Red Hat will be getting back into the Linux desktop business? That's the question I posed to Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens, in a phone call after the Red Hat/KVM press conference, and he told me that, 'Yes. Red Hat will indeed be pushing the Linux desktop again.'"

Comments

Re:About time

[morgan_greywolf]

I never understood why the[y] left in the first place.

1. They weren't making money in that area.
2. Most of the problems with desktop Linux at that time revolved around the fact that you need to need to break the law to in Red Hat's country of origin to distribute a useable system
3. They didn't want to compete head-to-head with Microsoft.

Things have improved somewhat since then: Other projects like Ubuntu and FreeDesktop.org have paved the way for desktop Linux; a lot of codecs have been re-implemented as open source and patents are expiring on some codecs; Microsoft doesn't quite have the teeth they used to have.

Re:Cost-Performance Utopia

[davecb]

No utopia, just an improvement.

A desktop workstation or fast laptop is optimal for a developer or fairly heavy user, but in a business context requires

1. buying the darn things
2. an imaging server, to create/update them
3. a backup and/or synchronization server (samba, unison and a tape changer).
4. Etc, etc.

However, many users don't actually need any more than a cheap diskless netbook or a glorified X-terminal, and can do all their computing on a back-end timesharing server.

As in "The Unix Timesharing System" that we grew up with, which was always orders of magnitude more cost-effective than individual shared-nothing workstations.

--dave

Re:They had their chance

[h4rr4r]

Yum and up2date both sucked compared to apt-get.

Do this;
remove all your kernels, then add one back and see how it treats it. Last time I did that yum left me with a non-booting box.

Re:Based on colour...

[Richard W.M. Jones]

How did the parent comment get "+4 interesting" when it so full of gross errors?

Ubuntu depends on the kernel and GNOME developers funded by Red Hat. Red Hat contributes everything back into the upstream projects, which Ubuntu has been noticeably bad about doing.

RHEL has both GNOME and KDE (and obviously X11).

Rich.

Re:About time

[morgan_greywolf]

If the answer seems obvious, you aren't thinking critically. A critical thinker knows good arguments for both sides.

Your signature line seems oddly appropriate here. ;)

Re:They had their chance

[__aanonl8035]

I just want to reinforce Wee's original statement. I am not sure that he was misinformed. When RedHat changed their direction from having a RedHat 9.0 product, to Fedora for the desktop, and RHEL for the server, it left administrators wondering what should they do for a migration path from RedHat 7,8,9 to the new products.

RedHat pushed their RHEL as a paid service. Administrators were left with the impression of "now" they would have to pay $500 a year or so to get updates for the server product. Or to use the less well test Fedora.

CentOS was a risky move. How were we to know what kind of quality CentOS would have? Hell, I did not even hear about CentOS around that time. I recall doing quite a bit of research "at that time" trying to figure out what is the best, most reliable migration path. And my conclusions were that other distributions, that had been around for quite some time, with a proven record, were a better option.