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Ubuntu to Bring About Red Hat's Demise?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Aug 02, 2006 06:25 AM
from the straight-from-the-tea-leaves dept.
from the straight-from-the-tea-leaves dept.
Tony Mobily has written a thought-provoking editorial for Free Software Magazine that makes the bold prediction of Red Hat's eventual demise at the hands of Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu. Calling on memories of Red Hat alienating their desktop user base to focus on their corporate customers and making money, Mobily states that many of those alienated desktop users are also system administrators who now feel more comfortable with Ubuntu and will make the choice to use Ubuntu Server over Red Hat now and in the future.
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Interviews: What's Fedora Up To? Ask the Project Leader 295 comments
Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack offered himself up for this interview because, he said, "I look at stories like [your] posting Ubuntu to Bring About Red Hat's Demise and many of the comments about Red Hat and Fedora seem very rooted in the world of several years ago, when the RHEL/Fedora split took place." This is a chance to clear the air, and get an up-to-date look at what Fedora is up to these days. So ask away; we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Max and (hopefully) publish his answers later this week.
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Ubuntu to Bring About Red Hat's Demise?
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Bologna! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bologna! (Score:5, Interesting)
Subsequently i have changed most the servers i take care of to Debian, and on the desktop I use Ubuntu.
That being said I have no reason to look from Debian to ubuntu in the server space but newer Linux admins may find it appropriate.
Re:Bologna! (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~lacasse/)
I'm in a similar situation as you, typically using Debian on servers and Ubuntu on the desktop, and a reason for switching to Ubuntu on the server did recently occur to me: if Debian continues this breakneck release pace (less than two years between releases? Egad!) then Ubuntu LTS might actually force less frequent upgrades.
Re:Bologna! (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~lacasse/)
YMMV, but for me, it just so happened that the default set of packages on Ubuntu closely matched what I probably would have installed anyway, if I had known about them. When I began my transition from Windows, I used Debian testing with XFCE on the desktop, and I didn't have the expertise to add the kinds of "polish" that came with Ubuntu by default (like automount/autoplay functionality). It helped too that at the time, Ubuntu's AMD64 version was easier to use than Debian's, and it had more recent packages.
I still don't know what all of those "polish" programs and settings are, and as long as they work I don't care; for me, Ubuntu strikes a perfect balance between the power of Debian and the ease of use of a sandwich.
Re:Bologna! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.vexi.org/)
It won't happen in the long term either. Yes, Ubuntu is becoming ever more popular, but this is an expanding market. There are new users arriving on the 'Linux' scene every second. Red Hat may not grow at the same pace as Ubuntu in the short, medium, or long term, but it will grow.
All Ubuntu has done has made the competition for new desktop customers more intense. Red Hat will continue to specialise in the server market where it will continue to grow due to providing valued sevice.
Market trends determine the prospects of a company as much as (if not more than) the competition.
Re:Bologna! (Score:5, Insightful)
It also has to do with enterprise deployment. When Debian / Ubunto gets to similar levels as RedHat in the enterprise, we will start to see support for it.
Re:Bologna! (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.bogado.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday June 14 2005, @09:40PM)
So I was a redhat user. I didn't like when the fedora was launched, but keep with. FC1 was launched and then FC2 and FC3, by the time FC4 was out I was hearing all those background noises, "ubuntu is cool", "ubunto this", "ubuntu that", so I gave it a try. I downloaded the instalation and gave it a try.
I spended most of the FC4 time using ubuntu, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't that much better. It did came with some drivers that redhat refuses to bundle, but on the other hand it did not have "mp3" and other MM in the same way that redhat din't. But the worst part was to develop with Ubuntu...
First I had to install the compilers that did not installed in the first round, ok compilers are a specific need and should not be installed in the generic desktop instalation, fedora also do not install those by default. But ubuntu did not gave me a choice to install them. The second head ache was with compiling gnome stuff, I had to install every gnome library 'dev' package by hand, a never ending task since there is aways another one that you forgot...
But I had it when I installed the motif, first I had the same problem that I had with the gnome devel. But until now I was patient and thought "sure this is a one time thing". But then I discovered that the package that had the Xt* development had not bundled the man pages, so I didn't have the man pages a 100% necessary tool. So I go to ubuntu's bug site and search the DB, I find a bug filled with this problem and the solution is "fixed for the next version". So a packeger did a mistake, ok fine everyone does them. But not updating the packaging until the next version, is an abuse. This fix would not step on anyother package toe, it should have been updated as soon as it was found. So I had to live without those man pages, the package didn't even showed up in the backports.
So what happened? I am now using FC5. I was not pleased with ubuntu, it was a nice desktop and all and I see why many people love it and may even try it again in the future, but for now I will keep going with my fedora experience.
Re:Bologna! (Score:4, Interesting)
Who's accountable?
Not Microsoft. Not any of the PC OEMs that include Windows on the products. Not Novell. Not any Linux distro I am aware of.
EVERY ONE OF THEM have disclaimers the limit their liability to $5 or less and put the entire onus on the user. No one has successfully sued Microsoft because they lost data or revenue when their Windows servers or desktops crashed. I am not aware of RH or any FOSS project losing a lawsuit filed by a user because of any problems they had using the OS or software.
So, exactly what accountability is someone buying when they pay for a subscription or a License?
Essentially, they are paying for a skilled voice at the other end of a phone line, or a reasonably timed professional response to an email asking for help. That service can be purchased independently of an OS or application, but even then those services have contractual escapes from "accountability" for any problems caused by using their service, or any software or hardware they support.
Having previously purchased a RHELS 3.0 one year subscription for $750, I can say that my experience with their support was not even as good as doing a google search for an answer to the questions I had. In fact, when RH support came back with an answer three business days later their solution was contained in two URLs, both of which I had located on my own within 20 minutes and before I posted my request for RH support. My son, the Oracle DBA, says that in his experience paid Oracle support is an oxymoron. He regularly uses Google and free, user maintained Oracle forums to solve problems.
Other organizations may give better support. I've found that Trolltech, for example, gives excellent support for their commerical QT products. But, YMMV.
All in all, the best and fastest support are the user forums and Google.
Distro de jour (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh huh (Score:5, Interesting)
One reason that Ubuntu will never be accepted: they don't offer the things that make beancounters sleep well at night. They don't have an "enterprise edition." They give it away for free - it can't be any good, right?
Ultimately, Red Hat targets corporate clients. Ubuntu doesn't. And it's not like that's bad!
Re:Uh huh (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://robots.org.uk/)
Re:Uh huh (Score:4, Informative)
(http://robots.org.uk/)
Re:Uh huh (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 20, @06:40PM)
He called me to his office (I was the "Open Source evangelist") and asked me what was the good thing in Open Source (specifically Linux at that time). After I tried to explain him, trying to supress my "enthusiastic bachellors" spirit, about the benefit of using an open source solution to do what they were doing (a "service based" buisness, instead of a "software" based company), he told me (something I will always remember) that free things are not good for companies, because it is the total oposite of an economy and, for there to be an economy there assets/services must be traded for money. In the absense of this (e.g. with "free lunch") a company can not be inside the "economic circle". [sorry, rough english translation of what I remember].
If I were to tell him now, something like 5 years later, I would tell him that, in reality Open Source (at least GPL/Linux) is not a "payless" or "gratis" asset. Because, when any company uses the software they have to (a) contribute to the community (pay, in terms of intellectual property) and (b) pay for support/integration, because the advantage of the closed source solutions is the cohesion they achieve in their software (something really nice about Microsoft products is that they work happy togheter, although for some people this is something bad because they "tie" the client), unlike open source software for which there exist thousands of possible combinations which, if the company is lucky, would be able find a half assed script to make two make 2 programs poorly interact with each other.
Re:Uh huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, where can I find him, I've got a whole lot of air he can buy or cease using if he feels it doesnt cost enough.
"because it is the total oposite of an economy"
He should probably go back and read a few books on economy again. The ultimate goal of free market capitalism is to encourage the most effective production of 'wealth' possible, with the endgame being the end of scarcity, when more or less everything the average person needs or wants costs close to nothing.
Of course, that is the total opposite of protectionism, where the legal system protects inefficient production from competition.
The economies of opensource are the economies of the free market. As components are perfected and reused and shared, they decrease redundant work and leads to far lower costs for the companies involved; mass-used and distributed code approaches lack of scarcity. At the same time, the costs are shifted into areas that actually do cost; support and other currently labour intensive and not easily automated tasks. The incentive becomes to provide faster better more cost effective support and customization, thus driving along the economic cycle.
Re:Uh huh (Score:5, Informative)
(http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)
But there is a company behind Ubuntu - Canonical [canonical.com]. They offer professional support for those who want it. Of course, Red Hat is much larger, more entrenched and more experienced, but I think that outside of the US the situation isn't as clear cut.
Red Hat, Centos, Ubuntu, Suse... (Score:4, Informative)
When I call Novell, I talk to actual engineers who can help me, not some dipship $5.15/hr college student who is reading from a queue card.
Generally I agree that RedHat is a crappy product compared to other Linuxes like Ubuntu and Suse. The flip side is that with Novell i.e. Suse AFAIK you don't have a project like Centos, which is binary compatible with the RedHat ES/AS product but is free and you get patches. This can be an advantage if you want to create a test setup for a product has been certified for RedHat ES/AS but are on a shoestring budget and don't want the hassle of dealing with the issues that can arrise if you try to install that same prodcut on Fedora or Ubuntu. Oracle products are a case in point. Installations of Oracle Application server, Database... the list goes on... that go without a hitch on RedHat ES/AS and Centos can be problematic on Fedora. Pracitcally every manufacturer of commercial Linux software certifies his products to work with certain versions of RedHat ES/AS so it is hard to avoid using Red Hat unless you are willing to put in the extra time it takes to debug an installation of your RedHat certified Linux software on an uncertified Linux distro.
Funny thing about bean counters.... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.keirstead.org/)
I wonder when the last time was that any company got Microsoft to fix *any* bug they found in a released version of software?
It seems like even giants of industry can't get them to fix holes any faster than peons.
Ubuntu *has* paid enterprise support, people! (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.cloudmaster.com/cloudmaster | Last Journal: Sunday May 07 2006, @10:01PM)
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid [ubuntu.com]
Alternatively, has anyone ever actually used RedHat support? *I* wasn't impressed...
Re:Uh huh (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/~Moby%20Cock)
They would have no idea if the OS cost money or not in my case. I expect there are other places much the same.
OMFG! Redhat needs to make money! :) (Score:5, Insightful)
I was one of those disaffected desktop users, but I still use RHEL (er...actually CentOS) for server machines that do real work. If you don't need bleeding edge desktop gadgets, it's still OK for desktop use as well. Ragging on RedHat because they had the temerity to focus on the part of their business that generated profit for them seems a bit harsh. There's plenty of other distros to choose from, including Ubuntu, if you want to live in the fast lane.
Cheers,
Ummm ... noooo (Score:5, Insightful)
The article itself is a joke, and does not actually detail any valid reasons about why Ubuntu will displace Redhat in the market. The 5th and 6th paragraphs are nothing more than "I want to brown-nose Mark Shuttleworth" crap that also does not feed the main argument of the commentary^H^H^H^H rant. THe last two paragraphs which barely have any meat on them are nothing more than rants not backed by any citations, evidence, deep analytical thought, etc. The crux of the article revolves around Redhat alienating their desktop "not paying a penny freeloaders", which is retarded because a) redhat's revenue shotup when they mandated fees and b) umm, whats Fedora again ?
While I commend Ubuntu and everyone else for their efforts on the desktop front I think it is very important to note that beating Redhat is going to require quite the effort, skill and resources. Redhat still commands other distros in the areas of Income, Innovations, and the holy-grail-of-almost-everything: Marketing. SUSE has been trying to beat Redhat for how hard and how long ?
(Maybe this company is trying for the "Dvorak-angle", which is to write something dumb and generate lots of attention to a whole lot of nothin')
A very odd line of reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
And to say that Ubuntu's server must be excellent because its desktop-focused distros are is like saying that Ford's trucks must be great because their cars are cool. Outwardly, it would appear that could be the case, but in reality market forces are completely different in cars and truck markets, just like they are in server and desktop distribution.
Ubuntu has done a rational job (and still incomplete) of making a viable desktop-focused OS. Yes, admins use it. Yes, they tend to use in one place (desktop) what they know for another application-- the server. Yet Ubuntu isn't that far away from RH. And the number of admins using strictly Linux is still very small, although growing a bit each day.
Summary: the lines don't join together in the logic. Yes, Ubuntu is cool, but it in no way spells the end of RH and it's juvenile to think so.
Why I can't switch yet (Score:5, Informative)
I guess I could be saved by utility that analysis the entire set of packages I'd need in order to install a given package on my computer. If I had a utility like that, I could walk over to an Internet-connected computer, download those packages onto a CD-R, and then install them on the computer that can't connect to the Internet. Or.... Ubuntu could start putting together CD/DVD sets that contained a larger fraction of popular packages than they can fit on one CD. Either development would let me kick Fedora out of the picture.
Wrong Target (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday January 12 2006, @10:28AM)
Much more vulnerable are Novell/SuSE and their rather hamfisted "me too" strategies and lesser distros like Mandriva. Those are the ones Ubuntu is likely to take market share from. SuSE could be especially vulnerable since their OpenSuSE "community" distro is arguably just a corporate sham with very little of a true community about it.
Re:Wrong Target (Score:4, Informative)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molar_mass | Last Journal: Friday September 19 2003, @11:21AM)
Substitute RedHat with Microsoft... (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday August 22 2005, @11:02AM)
Ubuntu has taken these segments by storm, they have drivers for most Big Brand PCs that come with the Built For Windows crap sticker. The laptop segment, which has grown faster than desktops, is again well-served by Ubuntu, and RedHat just doesn't have any mindshare / marketshare on laptops.
Microsoft... well, they seem totally confused with laptops since 2000. The Tablet PC was botched... so many broken standards and half-assed attempts later, nobody seems to know or care what MS intends to do with these things, come Vista. How many laptops are gonna have 128MB VRAM or 2GB RAM on the motherboard? My guess is less than 10% of the market.
While RedHat has carved out it's own space in the server segment and has cut off Microsoft's top-end, Ubuntu has encroached on the lower end Desktops and the Laptops segments. With Vista's hardware specs (let alone drivers) still unknown, with about 6 months left... lack of clarity on certified Vista drivers etc., I think Microsoft has more reasons for worry than RedHat.
My $0.02, of course!
I'm still looking for a defense of his thesis (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.codemonkeyramblings.com/)
1) RedHat is a large Linux vendor and gives business people someone to deal with reliably.
2) RedHat has an entrenched userbase.
3) RedHat Enterprise Linux is a good distribution in its own right.
4) RedHat has great support from "enterprise vendors" such as Oracle.
RedHat is threatened, but it's manageable. It's the sort of competition that will make them better, not threaten their ability to survive and thrive.
Redhat and Fedora are good (Score:5, Insightful)
Friendly rivalries should stay friendly, especially when core foundations of the free software development model are under attack from government mandated and enforced DRM in hardware, extortion threats to the north american internet infrastructure, and increasing attempts to tie popular hardware APIs to closed platforms.
Low end always wins (Score:4, Interesting)
PCs (nearly) killed mainframes. Windows nearly killed unix, until free unix came along. Linux is eating into windows server. Ubuntu is eating into Red Hat.
Eventually the mass market product overruns the corporate product, but it takes a lot of time.
Who says... (Score:5, Interesting)
For me ubuntu is no more than a buzz word, which uses Debian as a source of fame.
Self Fulfilling Prophecy (Score:4, Insightful)
2) Gather Community
3) Create Server Version
4) Slashvertise with 'Other Distros Will Die' Prophecy
5)
6) Profit!
Writers call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. For those unaware of the term, it means that if the prophecy had not been spoken, it wouldn't have happened. But the very act of speaking the prophecy sets into motion a chain of events that will eventually cause the prophecy to come true.
I was planning to switch my (messed up) Slackware server to Ubuntu server a while back, but I got lazy. This made me remember that, and got me a little hyped on it again. Until I realized that it was simply a slashvertisement. (Yes, for a free product. Slashdot has sunk low this time.) My fever has abated, but I will still probably work on that tonight.
I noticed ubuntu.com/server wasn't coming up... I'm guessing their own server didn't survive.
One man band financial backing (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://localhost/ | Last Journal: Thursday January 16 2003, @09:07PM)
Several of Tony's arguments seem to be creative at best and lack substance. Did the packaged version of RH flop? Looking at RH today I tend to disagree as their packaged offering was the precursor of the succesfull business model they now have. It's called Evolution. You try something, shave and mold and hopefully get to a point where it works better. And it seems RH got it right given the fact that they are the leading vendor in this space. Were they too expensive? Well, if something like $100 for a packaged version is too much for a company I think that company should reevaluate their existence. According to Tony the Fedora split was "underfunded and the "community involvement" was patchy and disorganised". Besides the fact that any new project will always have growing pains, in the end it's the result that counts. Maybe Tony should install FC5, subscribe to the mailing lists and browse the ton of helpful websites focused on FC. I did and I see a vibrant community that is delivering a distro that gets better all the time. So in what way did RH "abandoned its desktop audience, to focus on the more lucrative corporate market"? What do you call the free Fedora Core distribution? What do you call the commercial desktop solution that RH offers? Seems they have been successful in sponsoring and creating solutions that will cater to more instead of less.
Tony continues to be creative with his statement that Shuttleworth "divert tons, and tons, and tons of GNU/Linux users away from Red Hat Linux, and towards Ubuntu Linux". Looking at RH's latest quarterly results I don't see them loosing "tons and tons of GNU/Linux users" to Ubuntu. Googling around I found no supporting information about the mass defection of RH customers to Ubuntu like Tony suggests.
All in all Tony has not presented a single fact to support his statements. He only makes bold claims which border on unsubstantiated RH/FC trashing. His feable attempt at writing an "editorial" should be taken with a rock of salt of similar size used for Maureen O'Gara's poo.
count me in (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://unixbeard.blogspot.com/)
Red Hat will still be king in some markets but Ubuntu is going to eat its lunch in the mainstream in the next few years if they don't make some major changes to their business model soon.
Until more vendor products are certified (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://dev.lusis.org/ | Last Journal: Monday December 02 2002, @11:39PM)
Yes, IBM DB2, is certified to run on Ubuntu and IBM will support it. Same thing for MySQL but until something like Tivoli Storage Manager or WebSphere Application Server or BEA or any other host of products are certified and are listed as "supported configurations" by vendors, Ubuntu will only be for non-commerical applications in the corporate world.
Our model is RedHat for stuff that requires a support contract (WebSphere, TSM) and CentOS for development boxes or things like our Apache servers, CUPS servers and what not. It provides the same interface and knowledge as the RHEL stuff so there's no need to document something different.
I honestly think what's going to eat RHAT's lunch in the smaller markets is CentOS.
Not gonna happen (Score:5, Informative)
Re:clueless users (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.spreadfir...amp;id=12239&t=1)
Pretty myopic view there, muftak. Red Hat was popular because it was so widely available. By widely available, I mean to users who might've otherwise not heard of Linux (or Slackware, or Debian, or whatever). Red Hat makes money on corporate support, so it stands to reason that corporate users are interested in not only what they get in the box, but the support they receive from the vendor.