Red Hat Develops Online Desktop 119
pete314 writes "Red Hat announced this week at their San Diego Red Hat Summit that they are planning to compete with Microsoft on the desktop by building an 'online desktop' that will integrate local data with online services. Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens argued that: 'To user the desktop metaphor is dead. We don't believe that recreating a Windows paradigm in an open source model will do anything to advance the productivity in the life of users.'"
Competingwith Microsoft Google? (Score:5, Interesting)
took the words right outta my mouth (Score:3, Interesting)
I love it (ironic) when some CIO or other bigwig perports to talk for me. Actually, not only is the desktop still not "dead", but on my desktop is a Mainframe running COBOL/CICS/DB2. Still not dead. Not by a long shot.
Hello, world.
Yet Another Attempt (Score:3, Interesting)
To succeed you need a system that doesn't view the network as a bolted on thing, but integrates it at the core; Plan9 comes to mind on that front. At least X11 has network transparency, but it needs to be more efficient (think NX), and have far better security built in to really work for this. Bandwidth will slowly but surely fix itself. That leaves security -- and there's a lot required to make that happen. It is an ambitious and worthy goal, but in this case it is possibly a case of biting off more than you can chew: if it isn't transparent, efficient and secure, it isn't going anywhere, and fulfilling those requirements would require vast architectural changes.
Linux as a viable end user OS - Is it time yet? (Score:2, Interesting)
I like what ubuntu is doing - ie making the whole Linux experience easier and better for a common man. In a country like India where I live we are talking about 800 million people whom we can identify with the common man. 2/3 of the world ie 4 billion could be classified with these. We need Linux to target this market. We need Linux to focus on making the Linux experience much more comfortable for these people. We need more effort to be put into creating Linux drivers for the hardware that are not yet Linux compatible. We need easier installations for a larger number of applications.
I am not too excited about the proposition other than as an useful feature for a small percentage of the whole world.
The right step ... will the implementation work ? (Score:4, Interesting)
The desktop isn't dead but its damn stale - what I would envision is a bi-modal operation: if you have wired or wireless access your "desktop" seamlessly includes your "on-line" resources - applications - data files - links - IM buddies - etc. all integrated into your applications - disk volumes, When offline you would have what you have right now. Of course you would need a method to mark certian files as bi-modal so they would reside in a file cache and be available offline - the OS would handle file sync'ing etc. Or a thumb drive could be a file cache
On the flip side where the desktop is really dead (as in "Dead to You" ) --- I could see you carrying a USB thumb drive that launches a mini-linux session and then you connect to the "server in the sky" to access all your docs - email - applications - etc.
Both ideas are step in the right direction for Linux
No interest whatsoever (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was actively doing business travel, online collaborative apps were a supplement to applications on the desktop, given that the online apps were trustworthy (controlled by my own business). I never had any desire to get rid of local applications, especially since I had to be able to do office work, development and other tasks on the go, with no network access, expensive network access, insecure network access, or unreliable network access. If the "network applications" are downloadable and cached for off-line use, then you have nothing new, that's just semi-automated deployment and update. When it comes to that, externally controlled auto-update is a bad thing in many environments. I want to control when I upgrade, after I know the update is not going to break something. I don't want to log on, find out I can't access an old file, and have no way to restore the previous version of the application. Web services are continuously in beta.
Currently, I have absolutely no need for remote apps. I do all of my work locally and live rurally. Why would I want my applications and/or data externally controlled and unaccessible if I don't have a connection? I have full-featured applications (which would take considerable time to download). I pay for them once (if I have to at all). I have low latency. I can pick and choose which applications I use. I can have multiple versions installed if I need to for compatibility reasons. I control encryption and backups when I need it. What advantage does a "network desktop" get me?
Why bother?
Re:Competingwith Microsoft Google? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What about when you are offline? (Score:3, Interesting)
True, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about applications that run via a Web browser and integrate with a Web service (Google Docs), but which also run locally without Web access, albeit with some features disabled. It is important to note, we were speaking about the desktop metaphor being dead, and when your app is running locally in a browser, that does seem to be the case to a significant extent.
I'm afraid I have no idea what you were trying to say with that sentence. Could you please be a little clearer.
So? The point is to allow you to compose messages in Gmail when offline. More importantly, for applications whose primary purpose is not communication via the Web (games, photo editor, word processor, spreadsheets, calculators, etc.) it will allow them to be functional offline, only adding functionality when online.
The desktop is not dead. The desktop is threatened as a control metaphor, by the browser. I, personally, don't think Redhat's plan is sound or their vision is accurate. I never argued that they did. I merely pointed out the problems with the assertions that Web applications are not useful because they don't function when offline. Since they are moving towards a more hybrid approach, that is a dated view.
I also understand where Redhat is coming from. The desktop OS has stagnated. Most users still do not have (and will not for the foreseeable future) have spellchecking available in all applications. That is just sad. Any possible way to undermine MS's monopoly and add functionality despite their stubborn refusal to move forward gets developers excited. Anything that removes user's dependancy on Windows is a plus for me.
Hybrid approach (Score:2, Interesting)
I suppose it would require implementing clients twice. I think though, that I would prefer a more accessible system with fewer features rather than a new Office sweet every few years (or whatever other apps may be applicable)
Re:The right step ... will the implementation work (Score:2, Interesting)
While I might be missing something, this sounds kind of like Adobe's Apollo [slashdot.org] software idea.
This would be like having a version of Google Docs [google.com] that actually was installed on your computer, but communicated with a server in order to store your data. For an organization the end user wouldn't be able to tell the difference, besides the speed of the software.
I think the closest thing that this would resemble are Microsoft's roaming profiles, but in a way that actually worked.
By having a copy on the machine for speed and a golden copy on a server for backup purposes, there would be the ability to move away from the idea of "my desktop" so that no matter what machine the user was on, they would have all of the same programs and info that they normally had on their personal computer.
Another thing to remember (when comparing this to "services" as we know them now) if this was an Open Source project, it would be easier for individual organizations (or even individuals) to setup their own servers to store this information.
Re:Yeah (Score:1, Interesting)
1. The fastest way to have a project fail is to 'preach' to your audience. Re-educating the windows users and indoctrinating them into the 'unix/gnu' way is a long term prospect, on a single user by single user basis. If you spent any time in the ubuntu support channel you would know jus thow much work this is and how long it takes for the noobs to get a clue as to 'why' everything is the way it is.
Thus
2. The stated strategy of ubuntu is to NOT PROMOTE the use of proprietar/non free software/drivers/firmware, but allow for their ease of use. People are not getting SOLD on non free software but they are GIVEN AN OPTION to use it should they CHOOSE TO, and made easy to do so. TRANSLATION: the stated POLICY OF UBUNTU IS TO TREAT NON FREE SOFTWARE AS A BUG. You read that right. It is the CORRECT and SANE way to look at the situation because NONFREE SOFTWARE is BUG. You aren't going to educate new users quickly and equally, you aren't going to be able to satisfy new users demands for non free software without them, therefore the proper strategy is to treat nonfree software as a bug. You get them hooked, then you get them hooked on the GPL and the concept of freedom, then you get them to raise a hell of a fuckload of noise to manufacturers about opensourcing their drivers, then you wipe out the non free software through the sheer volume of people demanding it.
3. This saves projects like debian from having to handle the VERY VERY large workload of dealing with noobs and morons like you.
So yes, you are wrong because you are too fucking stupid to actually do a bit of googling and digging in the wiki.
Goddamned noobs.