Hacker News Reader

I always thought (until some years ago) that Red Hat would do what Ubuntu (or Canonical) has done to bring a friendly Linux Desktop to "normal" users.

View on HN

It's the classic start-up dynamic: you might have money and a vision, but if you can't pull off the execution, you loose.

It seems that RH somewhere along the way decided that it's OK that you need a competent IT-guy around to get the software running correctly.

It's more likely the RH looked at the market for a consumer desktop OS and decided that they couldn't make money there. I have no doubt that RH could produce a consumer OS at least as nice as Ubuntu, but once you have investors and shareholders you have to start to do what is most likely to earn you money. I don't know what Canonical's books look like, but I have a hard time imagining that Ubuntu is bringing them the sort of money that RH gets from its more business oriented OS offerings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com