From: "Peter Boy" <pboy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Am Do, den 05.02.2004 schrieb Tim Kossack um 22:42: > > to sum it up - red hat's current desktop offerings are basically their > > enterprise server putted in a differently labeled box, and i wouldn't > > exactly call that a viable desktop (strategy). > > Rh is the first distro with a usable, structured menu system and desktop > to be meant "for work". Compare it to thw bloaded SuSE, Mandrake, ... > menues and destops. It needed a lot of developement efforts to make it > work. It's not perfect yet, but a huge step into the right direction. > So, contrary to your statement, you might say RH was the first distro > which made some real efforts to bring Linux on the end users's desktop. From: "Austin Isler" <a_c_isler@xxxxxxxxxxx> > Why drop the the RHL line if you just turn around and have products like > RHPW. RHL became a familiar line, and I think it would have just been > better to implement the features of RHPW into RHL and package it as > that. (IMO) > > Austin I agree with Tim. I have been (I thought) more in tune with all this than the average consumer and it came as a complete surprise to me that Red Hat was going to continue to have product on the shelf at Micro Center and Amazon. I thought until now that they were getting out of the consumer retail sales channel altogether and that this was the extent of their offering: http://www.redhat.com/software/rhelorfedora/ Where is the mention of RHPW? RHEL was going to cost $179 from a business software distributor or from RedHat directly, with about the same level of support you got with RH9, or more if you buy a support contract, which you could also do before with any RedHat offering. Now it looks like what they did was rename the RHEL product to RHPW, cut the price in half, and put it on the retail shelf where RH9 used to be. Is the next one going to be RHPW 2.0? It looks to me like they have hired some Word Perfect folks to manage the branding. I may be all wrong about this, but that's how it looks and how it looks can influence sales. Peter may appreciate the RedHat advantages in depth but RedHat hasn't done a good job of explaining them. It looks to me like they had planned to abandon the retail market and are now getting back in. The following is from the RH website: -------------- Features not available with Red Hat Professional Workstation (but standard in Red Hat Enterprise Linux) include: ---Additional Support options -- Customers needing support beyond basic installation should look to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. ---Open Source Architecture Integration -- Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides the necessary components and support for integration into a managed corporate desktop infrastructure. Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be the core platform of the Open Source Architecture. --------------- If you have a shrink wrapped product and the customer wants to buy support, why not sell it? The second item just sounds like an upsell proposition. Is there a Grand Vision for "Open Source Architecture Integration"? I want to continue to be a RedHat user and advocate, but I wish they would make it easier.
