How global is Red Hat Global Desktop?

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 10 May 2007 05:44

Business IT - Technology

Red Hat Global Desktop "breaks through the price and performance barriers that have prevented many people from realizing the full benefits of state-of-the-art information technology," according to company officials, but it isn't clear what will be included or who will be able to use it.


Red Hat's announcement mentions emerging markets and developing nations, and according to some reports the software will not be offered in North America or Europe.

Nor is it clear what the package will include. The announcement merely says it "delivers a modern-user experience with an enterprise-class suite of productivity applications."

Another cause for suspicion is the statement that "Red Hat and Intel are taking advantage of Global Desktop's high performance and minimal hardware requirements to support a wide range of Intel's current and future desktop platforms, including the Classmate, Affordable, Community and Low-Cost PC lines." While that doesn't necessarily mean the software has been built exclusively for these systems, we can see why it might leave people wondering whether Linux's traditionally broad hardware support is a feature of this distro.

Red Hat released Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 in March.