Red Hat To Drop Boxed Retail Distribution 386
An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat, the leading American distributor of Linux, is abandoning the retail channel, the company is expected to announce Monday, says this story in Linux and Main. Non-Red Hat developers will be given a greater role in deciding what's in upcoming Red Hat distributions, too."
Makes sense.... (Score:2, Informative)
Nothing to see here, move on.
Re:oh yeah? (Score:4, Informative)
2. Red Hat: 21.33%
3. SuSE: 18.67%
4. Debian: 5.33%
5. Corel: 2.66%
6. Caldera: 2.66%
Others: 3.33%
Linux World Magazine
June 2003
Re:This is not a good move IMO (Score:5, Informative)
You "may" be right, perhaps instead of being stocked at CompUSA, they need to go the Suse [walmart.com] route.
"ask any number of helpful people in any number of Linux forums"
I have never used direct support from Red Hat, but when I was new to Linux, some of my most basic question were met with impatience and arrogance, or haven't you tried "this" yet, when I had no idea how to do, "this". It was only after tinkering a bit on my own and asking an somewhat intelligent question were the board or irc channels helpful, paid tech support on the other hand, will hold your, er.. hand, for the most basic questions
Was going to happen sooner of later (Score:5, Informative)
Then look at RH's support model they are like Sun they don't want to deal with the lower tier customers, they only want to deal with the large corporations. Guess you could say Red Hat is turning into a traditional Unix company.
Re:Effects for other players (Score:1, Informative)
Not accurate (Score:1, Informative)
The headline is inaccurate. The information that will be released on Monday is regarding the development direction of Red Hat Linux. Further information on the retail product line will be forthcoming closer to the product launch plan this fall.
Havoc Pennington
Red Hat, Inc.
Dialup users have CheapBytes and others (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Off Topic - Minimal Distro (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is not a good move IMO (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/
Disclaimer: I work for RedHat, but the first thing that turned me on to RH as a distribution was the documentation.
Re:This is not a good move IMO (Score:3, Informative)
Are you kidding? I'm in Mexico right now and there aren't any "on the shelf" copies of RedHat anywhere near here, so I'm downloading RedHat9 as I write this via my 256k DSL. It's going to take about 7 hours per CD. I would definitely pay $50 (or whatever) if I could walk down to the local store and pick up a boxed set even if I know I can download it for free.
The point isn't that it's not available in Mexico. The point is that if they're going to abandon the boxed set that means people in the U.S. are going to be in the same situation I'm in now. And it sucks. Downloading 2GB of ISOs is a big deterrent for someone that is kind of thinking about switching OSs. Even having to figure out what to do with the ISOs is going to be a challenge for many of them.
I agree with someone else in this thread--it's probably not a good idea. Having your product out on the shelf gets you known and in front of consumers. They may not buy today, but they may buy (or download) in the future. Having RedHat disappear from the shelves could very easily mean, "Oh, where's RedHat? I guess it folded. Oh well" to the average consuemr that might just be starting to hear something about Linux and/or RedHat.
Re:Not accurate (Score:4, Informative)
The headline is inaccurate. The information that will be released on Monday is regarding the development direction of Red Hat Linux. Further information on the retail product line will be forthcoming closer to the product launch plan this fall.
Havoc Pennington
Red Hat, Inc.
This is a gigantic opportunity for Lindows (Score:3, Informative)
Redhat was just there because they thought they had to be, not because it was making them any money. Linux won't die from the Compusa shelves if Mr. Robertson moves fast.
What about SneakerWare? (Score:3, Informative)
The only thing that bothers me is that I think that RedHat needs to court small hobbyists as well as large enterprises. This is how they keep thir name recognition. I am wondering how long before they abandon their standard distributions all together. That IMO would be a very bad thing... I am NOT going to buy RedHat Enterprise Desktop just in order to study to pass the RHCE....
Don't wait until Monday, read more here (Score:3, Informative)
Red Hat to change development model, abandon shrinkwrap [linuxandmain.com]
The company's next major release, codenamed "Cambridge," will not be provided in boxed, retail form, according to company communications with employees and developers, which have been made available to Linux and Main.
Additionally, Red Hat plans extensive changes in its development and distribution model. The changes will begin with development lists being made public, and will be followed by return of package maintanence to the developers themselves. Currently, packages are "handed over" to Red Hat developers, who then tune them for inclusion in a particular version. Under the new system, developers will maintain control of the packages.
The company hopes that the changes help to overcome the long lead time needed to produce boxed sets. With a six-month release cycle, and with the rapid pace of Linux development, many packages shipped on CD are obsolete before they ever reach retail shelves.
Re:This is not a good move IMO (Score:2, Informative)
Hey guess what (Score:4, Informative)