Once upon a time when you mentioned Linux to non-Linux users, the first thing they thought of was Red Hat. That's because the company was one of the first and most successful to get its desktop Linux onto retail shelves. But in a blog post today, the Red Hat team notes that they will not be working on a consumer version of their Linux product in the foreseeable future, instead focusing on enterprise software. In a nutshell, the company has concluded that while Linux has come to be popular as an operating system for servers, it's hard to build a business model around Linux desktop software. If you look at the desktop OS field, Linux is starting to make mild gains on Windows and OS X, but desktop Linux users are still few and far between when compared with users of the two more dominant platforms. And most of the popular Linux desktop operating systems are not just open source, they're free as in beer.
The Fedora desktop Linux operating system is based on Red Hat and will continue to be developed. But all of Red Hat's commercial software will now be designed to compliment the company's server and middleware software.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-17-2008 @ 7:06PM
Franklin said...
I'm surprised this is considered news. Hasn't Red Hat always focused on enterprise?
It looks more and more that Ubuntu is becoming the defacto Linux desktop.
Reply
4-17-2008 @ 9:57PM
ZeRo said...
You completely missed the point. The reason why this is news, is because one of the key players in making linux mainstream is leaving. Not because they are one of the major distros currently out there.
4-18-2008 @ 7:48AM
ogman said...
ZeRo - No, you missed the point; Red Hat left long ago.
Reply