Novell: it's too early to launch a personal desktop Linux

Article title: Novell: it is too early to launch a personal desktop Linux. Linux is a technology channel of the IT lab in China. Includes basic categories such as desktop applications, Linux system management, kernel research, embedded systems, and open source.

Linux is ready for personal desktops, but personal desktop users are not ready for Linux. this is what we got from the conference held by RedHat and Novell last week. Both Linux giants said they are focusing on the Enterprise field, and there is no plan to promote its desktop Linux products to the general consumer market. They said the cause of this problem is lack of demand.

Last week, in a statement issued by RedHat's desktop R & D team, the company said building a general-purpose Linux desktop operating system is not a profitable strategy. "Red Hat must consider the bottom line when developing products and technologies. desktop operating systems are much more difficult than servers," Redhat wrote. "The desktop market has been suffering from a single hardship from a single major vendor, and some people still think that today's Linux desktop does not provide a practical alternative ." Red Hat's main Desktop product is Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop, which features high security, powerful remote management support, and support for multiple operating systems through virtualization technology. RedHat continues to sponsor the free Fedora Linux release, but there are no plans to provide commercial Fedora support. The Desktop team also provided more detailed information about Red Hat Global Desktop, which was released last year and is intended to be provided to developing countries. As this effort suffers significant delays, RedHat says it is still committed to pushing forward the plan.

"We originally wanted to provide RHGD within a few months. In fact, the technical problems of this product have been completely solved and all have been completed. However, the combination of a number of business problems delayed the release of this product for more than a year, "RedHat said. "These problems include hardware and market changes, delays in the dealer product launch plan, design and provision of appropriate services, and license vulnerabilities for some multimedia codecs. Now, we are still working hard to solve these problems. As mentioned above, the business model of Linux desktop is very difficult, so we need to make the best preparations to provide a product to emerging markets ."

Novell focuses on the Enterprise field, but still provides consumer-oriented Linux products

Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian revealed last week that Novell's desktop strategy is also enterprise-centric. "In the next three to five years, the Linux desktop market is still mainly related to enterprises," Hovsepian told IDG. Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop product is designed to achieve interoperability with Microsoft technologies in a hybrid environment, this includes tightly integrated composite visual effects and a variety of powerful Mono-based applications, such as Beagle, Banshee, and F-Spot.

Although Novell and RedHat both agree that Linux desktop systems are currently mainly used in the enterprise field, Novell continues to retain its own presence in the consumer-oriented retail field, openSUSE, a Linux desktop system, is provided to individual consumers. this product is mainly promoted through their own communities. RedHat and Novell's Linux desktop strategy are quite different on this point. You can purchase a boxed openSUSE installation CD from a retailer, along with a user manual and 90-day hotline support. Red Hat's Fedora product does not have any similar version. OpenSUSE also has a two-year update and support cycle, making it more suitable for use as a desktop system for individual users. Since its release, Fedora has launched an update package every 13 months (although this upgrade method may be extended in some aspects in the future ).

Despite the lack of interest in the general desktop Linux consumer market, RedHat and Novell both made significant investments in improving the stack of the Linux desktop system. For example, Novell has made great contributions to the upstream improvement of OpenOffice.org and is also responsible for maintaining its own widely used patch set, including GStreamer integration and better startup performance. Novell also sponsors Compiz and many popular Mono applications. As far as redhat is concerned, it is also a very active contributor to Linux desktop systems and has become a strong backing for the development of important desktop infrastructure components, such as olicyKit, NetworkManager, PulseAudio, and D-Bus.

In the general consumer market, the most successful Linux vendor is Ubuntu. Ubuntu, which is funded by Canonical and has been adopted by Dell and other hardware vendors. Although Ubuntu received impressive acceptance, its strength is not enough to significantly change the market share of desktop operating systems.

Future Opportunities

Linux applications on the desktop are developing rapidly, but it has not yet been successfully applied to the mainstream. The slow acceptance of Vista by users and the independent Web applications on the platform have gradually gained popularity. this has created an opportunity for Linux operating system vendors to weaken Microsoft's monopoly position in the market. However, it seems that Apple is the main beneficiary of the dependence on the Windows platform for fewer users, rather than Linux. nowadays, the penetration rate of Enterprise Linux is growing healthily and steadily, which is a promising sign that the benefits of the desktop Linux system are beginning to be recognized by users who require it. As the desktop Linux system is supported by a wider range of third-party commercial software, we can see that more and more users are using desktop Linux, but this will certainly take some time.

In the mobile and embedded markets, the use of Linu has also increased dramatically, for example, for popular devices like TiVo and Amazon Kindle. Linux is also increasingly popular in low-energy budget computing products, such as Asus Eee PC and Shuttle kPC. these trends will help Linux become a viable option for general consumers and accelerate the popularization of desktop Linux desktops.