smart thinking! [LWN.net]

smart thinking!

Posted Apr 17, 2008 16:50 UTC (Thu) by sbishop (subscriber, #33061)
Parent article: Red Hat: no desktop products coming

I've thought for a long time that Red Hat is playing this just right.  Anyone in a competitive
undertaking has to work from their strengths--build on them--if they are going to have any
chance of winning.  If I were in the Linux distribution business, I do would do the following:

1. Start with servers.  That's where Unix has already been, and people are willing to pay for
reliability and support.
2. Become viable as a workstation OS.  (CAD, EDA, and desktops for programmers.)  This has the
same upsides as #1, and it's good desktop practice.
3. Become the OS of choice for embedded work.  This pays, but not as well.  It also gives
people another reason to use your OS on a workstation.
4. Target large, restricted deployments, like phone centers and kiosks.  These also pay well,
and it's more desktop practice.
5. The enterprise and consumer desktop.  I don't think you can maintain 1-4 without a presence
here.

I'm just a programmer; I could have it all wrong.  (I also fudged the difference between "OS"
and "distribution", but that's inherent with Linux.)  Red Hat, however, seems to be doing
exactly what I would be doing.  And I would say that they're between 3 and 4.  Let's be
patient with them, shall we?

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smart thinking!

Posted Apr 18, 2008 6:33 UTC (Fri) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]

I would like to add:

2.5: Support the best free software OS (Fedora) and watch it become #1 in the Free Software
world.

smart thinking!

Posted Apr 19, 2008 5:15 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

"" Start with servers. That's where Unix has already been, and people are willing to pay for
reliability and support. ""

People are willing to pay for "SERVICES" that they could not do by themselfs.

Buying a "box" and installing something with fancy guys that even a child could do, can never
be a sustainable business model IMHO... yes MSFT... but they will get their day of
recognition.

You could start with Desktop for that matter.

"Support":You get it relatively big, and avoid the SOHO and the small business that don't have
a IT department like the plague, or you can get toasted very soon, even if you have the best
servers and the best technicians in the world...

Because very soon the bosses or someone very close, would be "making" changes to your server
configurations and blaming troubles on you!... and you shouldn't get deals where only you have
exclusive access to root, because then expect a real flush of calls at the most strange hours
and days!... and for the most stupid reasons!... they own you.

Why do you think MSFT never really got on that support business model?

Unless you get it big, and only do real companys, support on servers is not a safe bet... but
is a temptation because the small fry represents almost 80% of business opportunitys out
there.

"Web services": Software installation can be a web service if made from source code and
online as example... everything that a software applications can offer from online is a good
bet. Servers are there with "hosting", but believe desktop can be much better, because the
target audience can be several orders of magnitude higher.