[PLUG] The "how to save Fedora" thread?

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 10:33:58PM -0800, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> I can summarize for you in one word the reason for the current flurry
> of venom: Gnome 3. 

> Gnome developers have never made it a secret that they view Gnome as a
> full-featured desktop environment for current hardware. 

> At the same time RedHat has been fully open about the purpose of the
> Fedora project: To be a test ground for cutting edge stuff that will
> eventually make it into RedHat after the Fedora users get the kinks
> out. 

All excellent points, although ...

In recent years, Red Hat has focused on the server market, and
R.H. Enterprise Linux is designed to provide a stable platform to
run business critical applications, mostly outwards-facing web stuff.
I use Scientific Linux, which is like RHEL except that Fermilabs
supports older versions longer (otherwise I would pay $$ for RHEL).  

So - I can imagine Red Hat taking another run at the desktop, with
a Red Hat Desktop product (Gnome 3) and a Red Hat Enterprise product
(Gnome 2 or "Gnome 3--").  They would be crazy to slow down core
server function to put dancing paperclips on screen, or to require
their legacy customers to learn a new interface to keep getting
support.  I imagine the result of "Enterprise Gnome 3" would be a
mass exodus to CentOS and S.L., with a distro fork and perhaps new
upstream vendors appearing out of that.  Red Hat is not that dumb.

Gnome 3 will eventually be great for individual desktop machines, and
it will be the death of Windows As We Know It.  It may even become the
core of "Windows 9".  Eventually Micro$oft, currently on the stock
market downwards track to be the world's 6th largest computer company,
will no longer have the resources to patch their bloatware O.S..

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs