Red Hat wakes up to the desktop
Red Hat has had a tough year. Oracle's decision to launch its own version of the open-source specialist's Linux distribution — and the resulting share-price dive — was surely the low point.
Novell and Microsoft, and mostly recently Dell, tying up to allegedly improve integration of server-side virtualised Linux and Windows environments must have been difficult to swallow too. However, Red Hat doesn't appear to be a company on the back foot — at least, that was the impression gleaned from its three-day user event in San Diego.
Chief executive Matthew Szulik even went as far as to say he wasn't going to be pressured into banging the drum for the latest release of the company's main OS, RHEL 5. Instead, he was happy to discuss the role of open source in the health sector and even its impact on terrorism. Other show highlights included more news on the One Laptop per Child scheme, Red Hat's decision to finally get behind the desktop — sort of — and DreamWorks Animation discussing how Linux helped to make Shrek 3 possible.
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