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Putting Linux on the desktop (vnunet)
vnunet talks with Red Hat
CEO Matthew Szulik about desktop Linux. "One of those Wall
Street banks now has one administrator for 800 machines. One did it then
everybody else came rushing to him to say: 'how did you do that?' Now nine
out of the 10 leading Wall Street banks are Red Hat customers."
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Putting Linux on the desktop (vnunet) Posted May 19, 2004 19:38 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] " Why do you think a Linux desktop will succeed despite Windows having a 96 per cent market share?The computing paradigm is changing. Whether it's your word processor, email package or calendar, it will be a web service in five years time. " If that will be so, than Microsoft has already won ! I can understand the point of view of entreprises to try to sell software "as a service" instead of "as a product", and in a formula where the central servers of that product/service has "the control"... it's convenient... and it's a formula to make money in a world dominated outside of entreprises by Warez, "free copys", freeware, and at last Open-source. ... Well... the power of linux lay's on the "boom" of internet and the possibility of freely exchange code and knowledge... not on a marketing centraly controlled paradigma... so a centraly controlled "Web Service" paradigma can only suit the likes of Microsoft way, and not the way of hundreds of thousands of Open-Source Developers, debbugers, translaters, and occasional participantes. It's my belive that the best "way" for a really Open-source fan it's something like a Mandrake Club, but with the possibility's of Gentoo... if Fedora could be turned in something like that, then it will dominate the Open-Source paradigma for sure. If Red Hat forgets about it's base, and worrys only about money and marketing controlling paradigmas, like we see in Microsoft "Web Services" push, for sure it can have sucess in the entreprise world, not because it will be a web service, but because it will be cheaper and of better quality than MS products, but it will see its fedora base shrink for sure !... MICROSOFT WORLD DESKTOP DOMINATION IT'S BASED ON THE HYPOCRISY OF SOFTWARE PIRACY... Of course i'm not saying that Microsoft promoted piracy... but they did a hell of a good job in taking advantage of it, to the sense of doing nothing to counter the illegal "white Box" boom, that has permited them to bullie a Hardware Industry caught in the net of explosive grow, and dictate rules to OEM big integrators like HP and Dell in trouble to sell against illegal "White box"... That was accompanied by a, in large extent bullshit propaganda, world wide massive marketing effort about the facility of installing and use... Now in a world where more than 90% of the SOHO and domestic market dont buy a legal piece of software that was not bundled in their hardware, its hard to make a business in software outside of the entreprise world,... and "web services" could only change that if "they" are willing to take control out of users, invade their computers deleting pirated data and code, spy on them if need, and that way really force them to buy stuff that otherwise they would take from another source,... its sad!!... So for Linux on the Desktop it is a tremendous up hill battle, because... IN SOHO AND DOMESTIC MARKET, LINUX HAS A TREMENDOUS DIFICULTY IN SAYING THAT IT'S CHEAPER THAN WINDOWS... ... and can only win if it facilitates to all those users, behind win9x/2K, a better Windows than Windows, and a better service most probabily not web controlled; That most logically could be in the form of a next OS WRAP, or at least in the form of a shell replacement for the integratores mixing Linux Desktop with legacy unremovable windows applications and "drivers absent" computers issues,... and of course a download data and software "CLUB"... It's time to "EMBRACE & EXTEND" the 9x/2k legacy Meanwhile Microsoft continues to sing the song of TCO, like a crazy waco, because of the tremendous difficulty of linux in the SOHO and Domestic market, and at the same time it prepares its user for a major suck-in "Web Service" oriented abuse,... but in a form that will not cause a flud out from the windows platform,... IMO that is the cause of the crap marketing, and delaying arround .NET and Longhorn... Microsoft has neither an easy job. Marques
Putting Linux on the desktop (vnunet) Posted May 19, 2004 21:05 UTC (Wed) by freethinker (guest, #4397) [Link] Won't Red Hat be surprised when those customers figure out that they can migrate to another flavor of Linux... which costs a lot less than Red Hat... with no per-seat nonsense... and it'll be much easier than switching from whatever they were using before. "No vendor lock-in", Mr. Szulik. Precisely.
Putting Linux on the desktop (vnunet) Posted May 19, 2004 22:41 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] The per-seat charge for Red Hat Enterprise WS is $179, right? And that's before any quantity discounts. Remember, these are Wall Street traders, very expensive employees. After figuring in benefits, the employer might be paying $200-300k for the guy in the seat, so the per-seat charge is in the noise, less than 1/1000 the cost of the employee to the company. Certainly if you're running a small nonprofit, you'll want to avoid paying that $179/employee, but do you really think Wall Street will kick out Red Hat based on this price? A competitor charging $0 might lose if he can't make a compelling case that support will be as good as Red Hat's.
Putting Linux on the desktop (vnunet) Posted May 19, 2004 22:55 UTC (Wed) by freethinker (guest, #4397) [Link] Good points. I must point out however that some of the "guys" are gals :)
Putting Linux on the desktop (vnunet) Posted May 19, 2004 22:09 UTC (Wed) by pivot (guest, #588) [Link] Linux is winning me and my collegues over because of freedom. As a developer / power user I'm year ahead of others who are not that computer literate. But they are following in our steps, slowly one by one.
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