Red Hat isn’t worried about Novell’s move into the Linux space because, marketing VP John Young said, Red Hat is secure as the No. 1 server Linux distributor. Update: “Novell prepares for major battle with Red Hat“, TechWeb says.
Red Hat on Novell: We Still Own Linux Server Market
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…can they stay that way? With a CEO who recommends a competitors product for the desktop, I start to wonder…
Red Hat, Inc. is most likely to be the next Linux company being bought by a big player. HP might be the most likely buyer. Also Sun, if not in financial chaos, might be interested, since their SuSE-based “Java Desktop” is now controlled by IBM, through Novell.
HP isn’t exactly moving the way of Linux recently. They’ve kept it as a side strategy though over the years, but if you goto shopping.hp.com, you’ll see most of the their hardware running on either HP/UX or Windows Server 2003. Hell, they’ve even indeminified their customers from any damages caused by the SCO suit and even moved BACK to CDE from GNOME.
HP is a large enough company to persue two different strategies, and they are large enough that they don’t need to swallow another company.
there is truth in this. Either Fedora is going to take over redhat’s market domance, or redhat is going to lose its position. What made Redhat so great at start, it was a distro that allowed users, regular users, install Linux and have a functional unix workstation. The marriage is over, and the divorce has been filed. Fedora is seperated, and redhat is running its mouth. Yes, redhat may be #1 linux distro, however this is pivotal point in their company history. What does redhat offer that other distro’s dont? Easy of install? hardly not. RPM / dependancy hell is now the next problem to be solved. Debian solved it, however debian is also very OUT-OF-DATE by DEFAULT (read the “default” before you reply).
I forsee the distros going the route of meta source and binary. I want a distro that is compiled to at LEAST 686, or even better to P4 or athlon. dont give me this -m686.. I want true optimized code. “there is little difference” is some replies, my answer there is a HUGE difference to performance because I see it.
Will Redhat live? I got the feeling it will not live the seperation of fedora. Fedora is on shaky grounds, community driven os, with redhat at the controls.
To quote Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy,
Redhat, “So long, and thanks for the fish”
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. It sounds like they think they can tell the future. Since Redhat stated to use ‘Windows’ on the desktop, I would not believe anything they are saying.
Plus, now they have to perform on the stock market, a few more bad quarters and investors will write them off.
They wont be for long. Unfortuanately when you killed your retail version and refuse to offer official support for Fedora Core, Red Hats days are numbered. I already have most of their products out of my server room and have since replaced them with SUSE and some Windows deployments. Red Hat will never, and I mean NEVER see another red penny from me and I am wholeheartedly positive I am not the only one expressing that feeling.
There are many classic marketing mistakes in computer history, but this is by far the biggest made by a linux company in their relatively short history – and here’s why:
to the linux enthusiast, red hat linux is just another distro, and not even a top contender, but to corperate America (not Europe) Red Hat IS Linux … it is the one and only one distro that people expect their IT department to be using, before asking, and it is the only distro which is approved or requested in many corperate IT departments.
However, Red Hat gained and maintained this position in much the same way that Windows gained a foothold in the server market (by being the dominant desktop) – in the past years, a small but growing percentage of companies has begun using Linux in various desktop and workstation niches, but in every case I have seen, it has always and only been by standardizing on ONE distrobution throughout the department and usually company. Even to the extent of version numbers (I have been told to install Red Hat 7.1 even after 7.2 and 8.0 were released – that’s how companies work …
So how is Red Hat going to maintain their mindshare, and corperate market share, when they no longer offer a product series which could (in theory) cross all office niches … a server version, a workstation version, and a light (cheap or free) desktop version (for machine either too weak for or not worth the price of windows xp).
So, companies like Mandrake which still have a free version, or SUSE who offer version for $40 all the way to real server competition (for Red Hat) stand to gain much more market share …
I don’t think Red Hat’s name will disappear in the US in the next year or two, but they will move from the undiputed lead, to the leader of a very close race, very shortly. In Europe, they just basically gave up … because SUSE and Mandrake already have major market and mindshare, and now Red Hat has given up its status as a real competitor to them in all markets – so what European government is going to use Mandrake or SUSE on the desktop and not as the server?
oh well, it was a good run Red Hat, good luck with your future products, but you are now giving up the real OS race (much as IBM did before you – staying only in the fringes).
Redhat never had a foothold on the desktop, no linux distro ever had and they never will. It is too uncertain, here today gone tommorow. As soon as a company would try to, it would disappear. This is why MS has the desktop, they built a desktop OS that is functional, has tons of applications that work and they provide support.
Instead of focusing on developing a desktop OS, they spend time on themes, icons, and so on the average user could care less about. Build an OS that has standards, applications that have functionality, and for pete sakes make the FONTS nice without having to spend a day downloading and trying to install them….
blah blah blah.
when did the marketing suits start visiting OSnews?
Look, Linux is not fit for the average home desktop yet. First it is not a given that a random GUI app for Linux can be installed on a modern GUI-fied distribution (e.g. Red Hat, SuSE, and Lindows qualify) without having to resort to a command line. Sometimes it can be done, sometimes not. Adding or updating drivers usually requires a command line. Look and feel is not unified. And, of course, many Windows-only applications have either less mature Linux counterparts or no Linux counterparts at all.
Red Hat is right, Linux is not quite fit for the typical non-technical consumer.
..is a different (non-Linux) perspective. They seem to be charmed in their Linux world and reject to see that other software and OS technologies and companies did do something right before them and outside of them. Red Hat thinks they can attack the likes of Solaris, NetWare, AIH or HP-UX but they are far from the level necessary for that. Take documentation, for example: Solaris 7, 8, 9 are all excellently documented, regardless whether you search with google or directly through docs.sun.com. Novell’s products are just as well documented, and so is HP-UX. Or, take support: RedHat’s support is terrible. The only way a customer could take RedHat’s support crap is if this customer has never had the opportunity to deal with enterprise support from real OS companies. This could be your average Linux-toting greenhorn geek, but the corporate world is another beast completely. Or, take suppport cycles as another example: RedHat has still to prove that they have what it takes to support 6-or-more years old OS. Companies like Sun, Novell, IBM and HP know how to do this, they brace themselves for a loooong lifetime when they release a product. RedHat’s track record is abysma, I mean, it’s even worse than the other Linux companies’!
Maybe RedHat did invest in a large scale restructuring to be able to accomodate these new requirements, but they should have mentioned this in some press release, as it would appear on their balance sheet. The only other way RedHat can hope to take on the corporate players is if they are bough by HP, IBM or SGI.
Their CEO really messed up Redhat when he told people to use Windows.
>> Also Sun, if not in financial
>> chaos, might be interested, [in acquiring RedHat]
Hahaha .. I sure hope it never comes to that. That would be the last nail in the cofin for the RedHat brand.
Redhat is putting the cart before the horse. They are starting to get arrogant, and they are certainly pissing of the community that got them into the door. They had better watch out. Suse never had an attractive distribution system (NO ISOs), and I personally have never liked any of their versions. But that could change if Novell puts their mind to it.
Red Hat forgets that Linux was mainly pushed by geek fanboys. These people don’t use the tool that’s best for the job. You have to please the GNU/Nazis if you want them working for and not against you. Red Hat said Windows is the OS of choice for the non-technical home PC user. That’s a plain out fact no reasonable man would deny. But the Debian Taleban now hate Red Hat for being so heretic. That means if the sysadim (a class full of GNU/Nazis) can chose the distro he will chose anything EXCEPT RedHat because they said something positive about MS, pissed him off with their decision to discontinue the non-enterprise line, etc. And even if the sane guys in the management force their adim monkeys to use Red Hat the Linux commies might go as far as sabotaging the system to make Red Hat look bad.
Red Hat’s decision would make sense if this was an ordinary market but 2 + 2 is not 4 in the Linux gulag.
Redhat has demonstrated poor leadership when they recommended to use a monopoly solution for the desktop.
If Redhat wants to identify itself as a vendor than it would encourage the open source community to work on a software layer from which they could leverage Linux as a product. The open source community requires an operating sytem, but a vendor needs the flexibility of a product. So that layer is the difference between a product and an operating system, in effect is hides the operating sytem, it allows the vendor to make the operating sytem unaccessible, and that is an advantage because the customer is than forced to rely on the vendors solutions, the customer can not resist the vendors offering.
….Developers who write applications for a product rather than a platofrm are not true developers in a sense, they are only learning how to reuse the development that has already been created by the vendor.
We could not actually do much better in the place of Redhat’s CEO or CTO or whoever runs the show there.
How many distros are actually bigger than Redhat. NONE. Why? Because Redhat has been doing a fair number of things right. How many Linux companies are profitable. Not too many. Again Redhat must have been doing something right. A lot of armchair marketers are busy deriding Redhat for taking a route to minimise their costs because the so called community will not even buy their distro. How long have they offered Boxed Sets, but no one bought. How many bought support. Products are made and discontinued on the basis of one thing in business, PROFIT. If the whole subscription thing isn’t working, then drop it, say the shareholders. Redhat owes the community nothing. Say that again. NOTHING. Yet some people like to talk like Redhat took somethig from them.
How Redhat’s track record is abysmal is not obvious to me. The now offer 5 years of support on their enterprise offerings. why do you think they will not be able to keep that promise. They have a very big incentive to do so. They do not want to get sued out of orbit. So I really think that as long as they are around in 5 years time, they will be supporting those distros.
I forsee the distros going the route of meta source and binary. I want a distro that is compiled to at LEAST 686, or even better to P4 or athlon. dont give me this -m686.. I want true optimized code. “there is little difference” is some replies, my answer there is a HUGE difference to performance because I see it.
I would kill for a P4 or Xeon optimized distribution. Is it possible to do that with Gentoo?
Yea, I to feel betrayed by redh. At the moment I don’t care if they survive or not. Maybe I’ll get over it but if they’re stupid enough to say something like …..
Look, Windows is not fit for the average home desktop yet. First it is not a given that a random GUI app for Windows can be installed on a modern Windows distribution without having to resort to opening a browser and manually downloading, unpacking and running the install package. Getting a new DHCP lease usually requires a command line, and many configurations are hidden in badly documented and prone to corruption database called Registry. Look and feel is not unified – default messenger, media player and office suite do not follow the common visual style that is selected in system settings. And, of course, many Linux-only applications such as mplayer, and XFree (remote windows on local desktop are great) have either less mature Windows counterparts or no Windows counterparts at all.
Just kidding
Who cares RAT, SUSE and/or NoWell.
They are deemed to be extincted anyway.
It’s just a matter of time accelerated by clueless CEOs
who are trying to catch up with their Uber-father Billy boy.
As of April next year our company will no longer be using red hat. Windows solution’s are cheaper. Infact we may switch to Mandrake. We like Linux because it provides a basically free server. Yes we pay annually for the “up2date” red hat network service, but now they want us to pay annually and buy a expensive package. whatever.
My problem with their recommendation was that they said use MS Windows. If they had said use OSX for the desktop I’d agree and think they were doing a fine job.
They should retract their statement and say Darwin/OSX is their recommendation for client/desktop systems until a company feels it is ready to adopt the Linux GUI.
OSX is costly, but very very easy to support.
Windows is costly and almost impossible to support.
Linux is free and easy to support IF you know what you’re doing.
If you’re a professional, use OSS or Linux. If you’re a typical outsourcing manager (not a professional) use OSX. Its that easy.
Since EVERYONE is leaving Redhat for SuSe why does #suse have 77 people and #fedora has 380 people on freenode? Sounds like a few people are still interested in Fedora. What we’re hearing here are <enter my distro> zealots who haven’t even tried the product they’re bashing. But what else is new. This forum is not much better then slashdot, flame first. Get facts second.
Redhat didn’t abandon the desktop user, they gave them EXACTLY what they asked for with no strings attached. Rapid release & development, apt- built in and a way to grab our nvidia, mp3 stuff. Fedora is what most of us (redhat users) wanted and asked for in our homes.
“….Developers who write applications for a product rather than a platofrm are not true developers in a sense, they are only learning how to reuse the development that has already been created by the vendor.”
That is the stupidest statement I have ever read. It is like saying people who use interfaces to hardware are not developers, they are merely using the device drivers provided to them. It is like saying people who write in C and use any type of function provided to them (i.e. graphic commands) are not developers because they are only using libraries provided for them. It is like saying anyone programming using assembler is not a developer because they are only using CPU’s/hardware provided for them. In fact, reading the utter stupidity of that post has made me dumber. There is a lot of different development levels, from writing bios, to writing device drivers, to writing workable programs. But to say anyone of those are not real developers is just plain ignorant. I would say anyone who had to reinvent the wheel every single time was not a real developer.
“In fact, reading the utter stupidity of that post has made me dumber.”
I know what you mean. First I was this night in the cinema watching Matrix Revolution. Now at home I am reading posts at OSnews. I guess my IQ dropped this nights at least 11 or 12 points …
>>You have to please the GNU/Nazis if you want them working for and not against you. […] But the Debian Taleban now hate Red Hat for being so heretic. That means if the sysadim (a class full of GNU/Nazis) can chose the distro he will chose anything EXCEPT RedHat because they said something positive about MS, pissed him off with their decision to discontinue the non-enterprise line, etc. […] Red Hat’s decision would make sense if this was an ordinary market but 2 + 2 is not 4 in the Linux gulag.<<
This is flamebait and i hope i will be modded down alongside this post. But i would like to comment on it. Take my location as whatever you like…
Obviously you (Max) understand very little of national-socialism or communism/stalinism at all. While they are both anti-freedom in any imaginable way and are very similiar in conduct, they are so different in their goals it should be obvious that using “Gulag” and “Nazi” in the same context is historical neglect. Both are representing something horrible, but they are still very different. Thanks for being an insensitive clod.
About the Taliban, we cannot decide the way of life for other people. There is no “good” or “bad” in life, only perceptions.
Again, i hope this will be modded down, alongside its parent…
HP seems to be bouncing all over the court finding its Linux strategy. First, Carly ran off Bruce Perens, which marginalized Debian support. Then about the same time HP followed the market and announced Red Hat support. Now they’re shipping desktops with Mandrake. What next?
IMHO HP should just get back to Debian. They could put some investment in Debian development and really help the pace development in the project out by putting some devs on the payroll, and they’d have a super distro to work with that wouldn’t cost them anything. Plus there’s the community PR points for working with a vendor-neutral distro.
With serious HP corporate backing, commercial software vendors would feel much more comfortable about releasing .deb versions of their products.
With the exception of Mandrake and Slackware, there really are no popular Linux distros left for HP to buy.
You might think that you are a developer using .Net but I only see it as reusing the code that has already been written for you and adding some specialization to it, so your more like a user than a developer. There are no developers of .Net only end users.
The most amazing fact here is Redhat never even had a chance on the desktop nor were they ever a contender. Yes, it was used by ‘hobbyist’ and people who want to tinker. But overall, the main workhorse operating system is still Windows. I think Novell will do the same with Suse since they will not be making money on it and the fact that Novell is traded on the stock market.
Investors will want the standard 20-25% growth per year and they will start getting rid of non-revenue generating products. This is difference between a private and a traded company. Linux needs to be guided but the general consenses is to fragmented and not unified along the front.
Lastly, the final blow to Linux was the statement made by Redhat CEO stating to just use ‘Windows’ on the desktop. This comment was the final ‘nail in the coffin’ for desktop linux. It now will truely be just a tinker operating system and soon to disappear from the market place.
This is flamebait and i hope i will be modded down alongside this post. But i would like to comment on it. Take my location as whatever you like…
never been to slashdot hey! Linux companies Live or Die often by the “Debian Taleban” as he called it. The mechanics of the linux market are both mind share and market share. Because Linux is mostly an online thing, online opinions count 10X what they do for any other software market. You can literally watch the mind/market shares flip with public opinion in real-time. 12 months ago, nobody had heard of Knoppix or Libranet, now they are in the top 10 of all linux downloads….in 3 months that could change!
Yes, Red Hat have just silt their own throats. After all, linux is still pushed mostly by word-of-mouth on web boards like this! Red Hat was THEE distro for serious business! That’s not really true anymore…or at least it won’t be recommended as much. Without the Home users, Geeks have no way to support them directly…or hone their skills. They get “in the door” often thru a geek packing a boxed copy into work…that’s no more. Now the geeks have to go somewhere else for pre-packaged copies…the “free” geeks already use Debian, Knoppix, or Gentoo so Fedora is only preaching to their own customers.
I think he is talking about the “developers” who make crapware apps using Object Desktop as a “development environment.”
Before I start this rant, it needs to be said that I am a HUGE fan of Linux, with Red Hat being one of my favorites. (Slack, Mandrake, and Knoppix are great too.) Okay, here goes:
Why do people make such a big deal about recommending Windows for home users? I recommend Windows or Macintosh for home users too. Linux just ain’t there, unless you wanna personally keep their machine up to date and be on call when they want to install software.
Software installation on Red Hat Linux and Mandrake is actually easier than Windows IF, and this is a BIG IF, said software package is provided as one of the RPMs on the CDs.
Also, Red Hat includes virtually no multimedia out of the box. Red Hat isn’t aiming for the home market, and really never has. They’ve always focused on the enterprise. Their recent statements and moves won’t hurt there chances there any as far as I’m concerned.
As far as I’m concerned, there are two types of Linux users: those who love Linux and those who hate Windows.
I’m the first type. Which type are you?
it is not the same, if you or someone else recommend Windows and if RedHat chief does that. They are not buddies or some kind of friends, they are competitors.
it doesn’t really matter is linux great for desktop or not (i use freebsd, and love it), it is the way RH behaves. people are getting angry, and that’ normal.
do u remeber Marlon Brando and Al Pacino … “never turn against family, no matter what happened” … and this guy did that.
M.
A lot of people seem to be bagging out Redhat. They are still offering a home desktop for free. By using Fedora they can offer bleeding edge desktop’s with stability (for free). If business want support, they have to pay for it (what is wrong in that, Redhat employ people & pay wages to offer support). Redhat are still giving back to the community. To date, no distro is making any profit out of home desktops, so as a business they can’t be involved in that untill it is profitable & all distro’s have now realised this & are trying to get into the business/server market. To get the desktop market they first have to get the business market (why did I first start using Microsoft, because that’s what I used at work). I hope all distro’s end up being profitable so they can put Linux/Gnu on the map.
They won’t for long if they keep pulling crap like this. They basically told their customers to go to hell with the “no more free ride comment”. And pulling support for support, fixes, etc. for Red Hat 9 only a year after it was released? Even Micrsoft doesn’t have the gall to EOL a product only one year after release. Hell, Microsoft only recently announced that they will soon be EOLing WIndows 98… Which will be about 6 years after its release.
Where’s the concern for your customers Red Hat? Take a hint… No one wants to do business with a company that is going to drop support for their procuts 1 year after they have been released, which will basically force businesses to upgrade.
MS and Linux zealots, which I have started seeing in this forum more and more, simply have no sense of balance …
For anyone says “Linux is ready for the Desktop!” – the statement is not false, with qualifiers, but they are not understanding what the other side means by ready for the desktop. Here’s what they mean: that the average person
(not a computer person) could buy a computer running linux, and be just as productive, feel just as comfortable, have just as much fun, and spend no-more time and trouble on tech support than for a windows user.
Windows is not an easy OS to troubleshoot and support, but there is such a huge infrastructure in place for it, including support personel, common knowledge, books on store shelves, internet resources, etc … that it is well supported. Macs are actually much less well supported than Windows, but they try to make up for it with ease of use and lack of need for support (which they often succeed in, but sometimes not) … Linux however has never had enough actual developer time going into things that would allow the average user to have a clue about how to do something with their machine …
1 example – have you seen ONE linux distrobution which clearly and cleanly explained the concepts of File Permissions (User/Group/Other) and of Super Users to a newbie logging into his machine for the first time – any equivelent to the windows tour (which all use computer people ignore and disable) to give them a grounding so they don’t feel lost in their new system?
Even a tour which did nothing more than walk them through the decisions for making their user account(s), setting up internet and email services, printing, and basic document and application management (creating and loading files and installing applications) … these are what nearly every average computer buyer needs to do.
I rememer a time with DOS and Windows when every program came with a small pamplet explaining installation procedure and issues … Windows finally progressed passed that point, but Linux doesn’t currently even have that … if a Distro would just standardize on a packaging mechanism, with an attached user help file … explaining the procedure, that would be a start …
I don’t know what this has to do with Red Hat … sorry
“There is no “good” or “bad” in life, only perceptions.”
Don’t be getting too cultural relativist on us now. You yourself said “Nazi” and “Gulag” both represent something horrible. So where do you draw the line? Taliban OK, Nazi not-OK?? The Taliban were tyrants like any other.
“This comment was the final ‘nail in the coffin’ for desktop linux. It now will truely be just a tinker operating system and soon to disappear from the market place.”
There’s always one who has to make a silly comment like this even thought the statistics suggest otherwise…