Fedora Desktop future- RedHat moves

[Alastair Neil]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 10:23 PM, Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 13:05 -0700, Francis Earl wrote:
> > That article ENTIRELY got it wrong. All RedHat said was they won't be
> > pushing Linux on the consumer desktop for some time. They make their
> > money from servers, and they are a company, so it's not in their best
> > interest to have a product they aren't profiting from.
>
> OTOH, as I've said for years, desktops beget servers. Who in their right
> mind would have ever thought that Windows would become a choice as a
> server platform?? The Windows3.1 users got used to the desktop and it
> rolled from there. Disregard the desktops of college entry level users,
> and they'll migrate with their favorite platform and comfort level to
> using it to admin their future server needs. What's not to understand in
> this? RedHat could very well be blowing their lead and not seeing it
> until too late in the game to recover.
>
> We (RH) used to have college programs all over the place ...usually
> promoted as install fests at Universities. I haven't heard of one in the
> press for years now. Servers are where the money is, no doubt. But, it
> is better IMHO to have the future admins loyalty through the user
> desktop by catering to them. I spent years in Marketing. I learned to
> never EVER disregard the little guy. He might become the next purchasing
> agent and/or decision maker. My two cents, Ric


An where has it got Microsoft? 20 years and countless billions invested in
marketing and they still manage only 30% of the server market.

True, Novel lost out to WinNT in part because users got used to the Windows
interface and wanted a similar experience for managing their servers.  I
refuse to believe that there is such a  gulf between Ubuntu and RHEL in
functionality that users would have the same visceral reaction and defect in
droves from RH to Ubuntu - because they love brown backgrounds on their
Gnome desktops.  Red Hat has focused its desktop efforts on crafting a
distribution that is best in class for administering servers, just as SUSE
is crafting a business productivity centric desktop distribution with an
emphasis on Windows interoperability (thus Evolution, Mono/silverlight and
"Don't Sue us please Bill!" agreements).  These distros have carved their
own niches, I don't as yet know what Ubuntu's niche is - windows
malcontents? home tinkerers/hobyists?  Small Home Office?  You could argue
that this is exactly the way linux started and who knows in 10 or 20 years
maybe they will have a significant enterprise share, however, I doubt it.
Being able to play MP3's out of the box rarely makes it onto a enterprise
server deployment specification.
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