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When IBM bought Red Hat this was the kind of thing I worried might happen: That Red Hat might stop supporting the Linux Desktop. I have no idea how their annou

by hannob 3y ago

When IBM bought Red Hat this was the kind of thing I worried might happen: That Red Hat might stop supporting the Linux Desktop. I have no idea how their announcement makes any sense. They want to improve workstation experience by... not offering an office application any more? Like, what do you even mean by workstation?

psychphysic 3y ago
They are pivoting the work they do for workstations away from applications to HDR etc. That 'for' doesn't mean they are pivoting to Workstations. Guess it's a bit ambiguous, but anyways so libre office won't be a package on RHEL that's no big issue so long as the RPM and flatpak work fine.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  >that's no big issue so long as the RPM and flatpak work fine. // RH are no longer putting any effort into that, when they were doing before, so ... if RH are saving anything then LO will have more issues for RH users than it has up to now.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  HDR sounds like a nice excuse rather than a genuine reason...
  - George83728 3y ago
    Exactly, one has nothing to do with the other. Or maybe people think that the Red Hat employees presently tasked with packaging LibreOffice also happened to be graphics stack specialists with the experience needed to bring HDR to Linux. That seems unlikely to me.
steve1977 3y ago
Workstation usually means a high powered system for one user (at a time) where you would run things like CAD, 3D tools, mathematics or science software etc. So a focus on professional graphics features certainly makes sense. A (relatively) low powered system just for productivity software and web browsing would usually be called a desktop. At least some point there were actually different variants of RHEL for workstations and desktops. https://access.redhat.com/discussions/3772571 https://access.redhat.com/discussions/3772571
pjmlp 3y ago
Red-Hat has officially given up on the Linux Desktop about 15 years ago. There are enough places to read that announcement and related reactions.
- dralley 3y ago
  If by "given up", you mean still investing more (sometimes far more) into desktop Linux than practically anyone else. Desktop is simultaneously not a large priority for Red Hat, and even less of a priority for every corporate player that isn't Red Hat. RH is still doing a lot of work on things like Pipewire, Wayland, Flatpak, Gtk, Gnome, AMD graphics drivers (David Arlie wrote RADV), making the Nvidia graphics drivers situation suck less, Mesa, etc. They were doing nearly all of the Xorg maintenance too and nobody really picked it up after they stopped. The only company with a comparable level of investment in desktop Linux is maybe Collabora or (to a lesser degree and with a much more restricted focus) Valve
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    To the extent required by Red-Hat Enterprise paying customers. If anything, it shows how much everyone still cares. Greetings from 2008 Slashdot, https://www.slashdot.org/story/100116 https://www.slashdot.org/story/100116
    - _cenw 3y ago
      Consumer desktop product. That's a category that nobody competes in. Apple sells hardware that incidentally includes macOS and Microsoft hasn't cared about selling Windows licenses directly to customers for years and their OEM licensing business for consumer devices (i.e. non-Pro licenses) is neat, but it couldn't sustain Windows by itself.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        The shopping mall down the street certainly has Windows Home DVDs, as does Microsoft online store. Try to find value added enterprise desktop. https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/all-products https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/all-products

by hannob 3y ago

psychphysic 3y ago

They are pivoting the work they do for workstations away from applications to HDR etc. That 'for' doesn't mean they are pivoting to Workstations. Guess it's a bit ambiguous, but anyways so libre office won't be a package on RHEL that's no big issue so long as the RPM and flatpak work fine.

pbhjpbhj 3y ago
>that's no big issue so long as the RPM and flatpak work fine. // RH are no longer putting any effort into that, when they were doing before, so ... if RH are saving anything then LO will have more issues for RH users than it has up to now.
ekianjo 3y ago
HDR sounds like a nice excuse rather than a genuine reason...
- George83728 3y ago
  Exactly, one has nothing to do with the other. Or maybe people think that the Red Hat employees presently tasked with packaging LibreOffice also happened to be graphics stack specialists with the experience needed to bring HDR to Linux. That seems unlikely to me.

steve1977 3y ago

Workstation usually means a high powered system for one user (at a time) where you would run things like CAD, 3D tools, mathematics or science software etc. So a focus on professional graphics features certainly makes sense. A (relatively) low powered system just for productivity software and web browsing would usually be called a desktop. At least some point there were actually different variants of RHEL for workstations and desktops. https://access.redhat.com/discussions/3772571 https://access.redhat.com/discussions/3772571

pjmlp 3y ago

Red-Hat has officially given up on the Linux Desktop about 15 years ago. There are enough places to read that announcement and related reactions.

dralley 3y ago
If by "given up", you mean still investing more (sometimes far more) into desktop Linux than practically anyone else. Desktop is simultaneously not a large priority for Red Hat, and even less of a priority for every corporate player that isn't Red Hat. RH is still doing a lot of work on things like Pipewire, Wayland, Flatpak, Gtk, Gnome, AMD graphics drivers (David Arlie wrote RADV), making the Nvidia graphics drivers situation suck less, Mesa, etc. They were doing nearly all of the Xorg maintenance too and nobody really picked it up after they stopped. The only company with a comparable level of investment in desktop Linux is maybe Collabora or (to a lesser degree and with a much more restricted focus) Valve
- pjmlp 3y ago
  To the extent required by Red-Hat Enterprise paying customers. If anything, it shows how much everyone still cares. Greetings from 2008 Slashdot, https://www.slashdot.org/story/100116 https://www.slashdot.org/story/100116
  - _cenw 3y ago
    Consumer desktop product. That's a category that nobody competes in. Apple sells hardware that incidentally includes macOS and Microsoft hasn't cared about selling Windows licenses directly to customers for years and their OEM licensing business for consumer devices (i.e. non-Pro licenses) is neat, but it couldn't sustain Windows by itself.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      The shopping mall down the street certainly has Windows Home DVDs, as does Microsoft online store. Try to find value added enterprise desktop. https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/all-products https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/all-products