RedHat conservatively treats desktop Linux market demands

Article title: RedHat conservatively treats desktop Linux market demands. 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.

In the case of a wave of growth in demand for desktop Linux on low-price computers, Red Hat, a leading commercial Linux operator, believes that the desktop Linux market has limited profits and does not intend to invest in additional code.

When low-price computers such as OLPC and Asus Eee PC successfully created a market topic and forced Microsoft to delay XP exit date for the market, linux desktop systems are expected to leave a new line of comments along with this trend. However, Tom Zack, president of Red Hat's Asia Pacific business, recently accepted an interview with ZDNet but made a single discussion. He thought that the Linux desktop market was not there yet, and Red Hat did not plan to invest in it at this moment.

"You can see that most desktop Linux vendors have not made any money or even lost a lot of money," Zack said bluntly, red Hat does not look at the future of the desktop Linux operating system, but believes that the field is still dominated by community users and has not yet become a profitable market.

Zack said that Red Hat is not completely not a desktop market. In fact, the company will still provide commercial desktop versions for customers who need the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system. In addition, red Hat is also a member of the OLPC and provides the Linux operating system of the OLPC. "We make a separation. OLPC and Fedora are completely Community products, not making profits, however, for the desktop Linux market that is truly profitable, we do not have a clear approach in addition to the existing commercial version, "he said.

Red Hat's biggest competitor in the Linux market, Novell SUSE, apparently, has a very different idea and practice.

Holger Dyroff, vice president of Novell SUSE Linux, said in May that low-cost computers carrying Linux systems will help a large number of general consumers to get in touch with and get familiar with Linux interfaces, in this way, the popularity of Linux is promoted, the doubts about purchasing Linux desktops are reduced, and the Enterprise Linux desktop market is opened. Novell and MSI jointly launched a low-cost Notebook MSI Wind Notebook with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, to implement the idea.

In the face of industry practices, Zack said that Red Hat is still optimistic about Linux on the desktop in the long run. at this stage, it focuses on community development and maintains the popularity of Linux on the desktop. "Once market demand arises, don't be surprised at our ability to invest right away, "he says, but he doesn't want to predict the possible time.

Zack said that the enterprise server Linux market will still be the main force of Red Hat under topics such as the continued optimism of global server demands and the trend of cloud computing stimulating server demands, he said, after Red Hat's combination of existing products, helping enterprises build a low-cost SOA architecture is the primary goal of Red Hat at this stage.