In what surely came as a blow to many Linux aficionados, Red Hat (NYSE: RHT)
announced Wednesday that it will not develop a desktop implementation
of the operating system for the consumer market anytime soon.
"We have no plans to create a traditional
desktop product for the consumer market in the foreseeable future," the
company wrote in a post on its blog, citing market pressures as its
reason.
"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," the company explained. "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."
Alternate Focus
Red Hat is one of the largest distributors of commercial Linux implementations, though it faces many competitors, including Mandriva, Ubuntu and Linspire 
.
Indeed, "technical developments that have become available over the
past year or two are accelerating the spread of the Linux Desktop," Red
Hat said.
Rather than working on a traditional desktop implementation,
however, Red Hat plans to focus its desktop attention on Enterprise
Desktop Linux, Fedora and Red Hat Global desktop over the course of
2008 and 2009, the company said.
"This is probably a good move," Gerhard Mack, a Montreal-based
consultant and Slashdot blogger, told LinuxInsider. "It makes sense for
them to concentrate on what they're good at and leave the bleeding edge
for people willing to take that risk."
'Chicken and Egg Proposition'
Linux is doing "extremely well" at the foundation level with its server operating systems, Laura DiDio, an analyst with Yankee Group, told LinuxInsider. "It has matured and really come of age, it is reliable, and it offers great performance," she said.
On the desktop, however, "it's more of a user-dictated phenomenon,"
DiDio added. "At the application level, users need a reason to switch,
and the fact of the matter is, on the desktop it's either a Windows
world or a Mac world. Why should users switch if they like what they
have?"
The lifeblood of the desktop operating system is going to be the
third-party applications that are written for the desktop platform, she
added.
"If you're a Linux or open source vendor, you've got to time the
market exactly -- you don't want to be too far ahead and you don't want
to be behind," she explained. "It's a chicken and egg proposition."
Hybrid Approach
Third-party application developers only have finite money for
research and development, she added, "so they have to really pick and
choose. Before they decide to allocate development dollars and manpower
resources to building an application for a particular platform such as
Linux on the desktop, they have to make sure there's demand."
What's common these days among application developers is a hybrid
approach, in which they build applications that can run on a Linux
server but offer the same look and feel as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) 
products at a lower cost, DiDio noted.
"I'm not anti-Linux by any means, but I do think Linux on the
desktop is still very much a niche market because of the entrenched
application landscape for both Microsoft and Macintosh," DiDio
concluded. "I don't think Linux on the desktop is dead, I just don't
think it's going to have the same level of adoption and success in the
near term as server-based Linux.
"It's a really tough market right now," she said. "I think Red Hat's decision was a purely economic one."
'I'm Not Totally Shocked'
Red Hat has already diverted some of its focus and attention from
Fedora, its community Linux, so "I'm not totally shocked" by this
announcement, Jay Lyman, an analyst with the 451 group, told
LinuxInsider. "This isn't the first time they've said, 'we're really
not that interested in the desktop.'"
However, is the market really too tough?
"Look at Ubuntu, which has continued to lead in desktop Linux,"
Lyman pointed out. "They've done it by making Linux easier and sexier,
while Fedora is much more technically and server oriented. It doesn't
have the same consumer and mainstream appeal."
In addition, a number of market factors now at work may actually improve the market for desktop Linux, he added.
Smaller Devices
"Just watch the subnotebook and netbook category, because I think
that's a huge boon for Linux," he explained. "It was significant last
year when Ubuntu got preinstalled on some Dell computers, but I think
in the long run these smaller devices will be even more significant."
The trouble Microsoft Vista is having could also spur enterprises to
look more closely at the idea of switching to Linux, Lyman added.
Looking forward, then, "I think it's going to be a long haul for
Linux," Lyman concluded, "but with these other categories of devices
and the enterprise opportunity because of Vista, there are a few things
here that are going to change how tough it is."
