I agree. From that perspective Red Hat is risking their long-term business. Once all these Ubuntu users enter the Enterprise market they unmistakenly will bring in Ubuntu in the Enterprise, maybe to Red Hat's demise. Maybe.
What I do not agree with is that RHEL is the solution to this, nor that Red Hat is touting the desktop market. I think the biggest problem is that from an economic point-of-view, there is no desktop market. There may be an Enterprise Desktop market, but that is one where support is required and Red Hat is already providing that.
By the way, my opinion was always that Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and others are not the solution for the desktop for most users. Even when home users don't need the support, they do need something dependable and something that does not change every few months. So my believe is that CentOS, RHEL, Ubuntu LTS and SLES are a much better fit for desktop and appliances in general because they do not require the same level as maintenance as most bleeding-edge distributions.
Simply think of your mother. Are you going to update her computer every 6 months or do you prefer that she can use the same environment as long as possible (+5 years). Possibly the same old OpenOffice she is accustomed to and works.
Sadly, the people promoting Linux are usually the people that get away with updates and upgrades and non-technical people are influenced by the people that do not necessarily understand their needs.
If you use your computer for email and web-browsing, spending a day to upgrade your computer every year is a big big waste of time. If you can reduce this to once every 5 years, possibly when you buy newer hardware anyway, you win.
The Linux desktop is almost there. Newer versions of the desktop offer less and less new reasons to upgrade my desktop. In fact I am running CentOS 5 since last year with little need to upgrade. Maybe I go with CentOS 6 and possibly I buy myself a new laptop for this purpose.
I agree. From that
I agree. From that perspective Red Hat is risking their long-term business. Once all these Ubuntu users enter the Enterprise market they unmistakenly will bring in Ubuntu in the Enterprise, maybe to Red Hat's demise. Maybe.
What I do not agree with is that RHEL is the solution to this, nor that Red Hat is touting the desktop market. I think the biggest problem is that from an economic point-of-view, there is no desktop market. There may be an Enterprise Desktop market, but that is one where support is required and Red Hat is already providing that.
By the way, my opinion was always that Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and others are not the solution for the desktop for most users. Even when home users don't need the support, they do need something dependable and something that does not change every few months. So my believe is that CentOS, RHEL, Ubuntu LTS and SLES are a much better fit for desktop and appliances in general because they do not require the same level as maintenance as most bleeding-edge distributions.
Simply think of your mother. Are you going to update her computer every 6 months or do you prefer that she can use the same environment as long as possible (+5 years). Possibly the same old OpenOffice she is accustomed to and works.
Sadly, the people promoting Linux are usually the people that get away with updates and upgrades and non-technical people are influenced by the people that do not necessarily understand their needs.
If you use your computer for email and web-browsing, spending a day to upgrade your computer every year is a big big waste of time. If you can reduce this to once every 5 years, possibly when you buy newer hardware anyway, you win.
The Linux desktop is almost there. Newer versions of the desktop offer less and less new reasons to upgrade my desktop. In fact I am running CentOS 5 since last year with little need to upgrade. Maybe I go with CentOS 6 and possibly I buy myself a new laptop for this purpose.