Red Hat Inc., a renowned proponent of open-source and Linux software, has this week announced that it is shelving plans to distribute a traditional desktop Linux product into the consumer PC market.
Linux specialist Red Hat abandons plan to distribute open-source desktop operating system. Credit: Red Hat.
Red Hat’s initial plan to launch the widespread availability of a Linux desktop operating system was first unveiled in 2007. However, with open-source Linux only accounting for around 1.2 percent of the PC market (Gartner), it would appear that Red Hat is blanching at the prospect of falling flat in the face of Microsoft’s Windows dominance.
“The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative,” explained Red Hat officials on a related blog post. “Building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled, or are run as charities.”
Issuing further commenting via its official Web site, North Carolina-based Red Hat said that its reasoning also lies in it operating as a public, for-profit company that must manufacture products and technologies that enable profit and turnover, which, the company notes, is considerably harder to accomplish through desktop PCs than it is on business-based server systems.
“We are focused on infrastructure software for the enterprise market, and to that market we are offering the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop,” said Michael Chen, Red Hat’s VP of corporate marketing while speaking to tech magazine PC World. “You need a different support ecosystem and applications for the consumer desktop.” he added.
While Red Hat is abandoning its desktop PC distribution plan, the company has said it has no intention of similarly dropping its Red Hat Global Desktop program, which will see the development of a scaled-back Linux operating system specifically created for low-cost computers in emerging markets.
Any doubts that influenced Red Hat on its decision to drop the conventional desktop plan in the face of the near-insurmountable barrier created by an entrenched Windows opponent are not rearing up in the case of low-cost computing, which is still a growing industry.
An area obviously not without rival interests, Microsoft Corp. has recently announced the prolonged support of Windows XP, but only on low-cost systems, while Taiwan-based computer maker ASUSTek has also confirmed the availability of XP on the latest 9-inch version of its acclaimed Eee PC laptop.
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