One thing RHEL's GUI does is make RHEL more real in the minds of prospective purchasers of RHEL server licenses. Windows has a big advantage: the prospect has

One thing RHEL's GUI does is make RHEL more real in the minds of prospective purchasers of RHEL server licenses. Windows has a big advantage: the prospect has probably personally used the product. Although Red Hat's attempt to replicate that advantage has failed (i.e., the vast majority of IT executives still run Windows on their personal computers), it remains the case that it is advantageous if the RHEL salesman can pull out a laptop running RHEL and show it to the prospect. "Show, don't tell," I believe is a saying among salesmen. Also, if the salesman's laptop is running RHEL, that is an costly signal to the prospect that Red Hat believes in its product enough to use it to support the IT needs of its salesmen. It is more persuasive than having the saleman tell the prospect, "Yes, my laptop runs Windows, admittedly, but it is communicating with a RHEL server, where all the data I need for my job is actually kept." Summary: desktop RHEL helps sell server RHEL.