Comments on: Red Hat v Ubuntu: The Mobily Editorial http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/08/04/red-hat-v-ubuntu-the-mobily-editorial/ because technology is just another ecosystem Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:25:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: stephen o'grady http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/08/04/red-hat-v-ubuntu-the-mobily-editorial/#comment-2209 stephen o'grady Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:37:20 +0000 http://redmonk.com/sogrady/wp/?p=986#comment-2209 anon: excellent point, and one i've made many times to the vendors we speak with on the subject. the primary difficulty in this market, however, is still compatability. many SMBs use things like Quickbooks, which are still Windows (or Mac) only apps. even Quickbooks Online, which we use, requires IE. Luis: i agree that RH/SuSE sometimes don't get enough credit for the work that they do, but as you point out i think some of that is deserved. Ubuntu does get a lot of bang for their buck, and in my opinion that's largely attributable to a.) focus on polish (i know mark doesn't like that word, but it's what fits), and b.) convention over configuation (rather than release a distro with multiple browsers, office productivity suites, and so on - Ubuntu makes some sensible choices to keep things simple). hopefully the big guys can learn from this - SuSE seems to have. anon: excellent point, and one i’ve made many times to the vendors we speak with on the subject. the primary difficulty in this market, however, is still compatability. many SMBs use things like Quickbooks, which are still Windows (or Mac) only apps. even Quickbooks Online, which we use, requires IE.

Luis: i agree that RH/SuSE sometimes don’t get enough credit for the work that they do, but as you point out i think some of that is deserved. Ubuntu does get a lot of bang for their buck, and in my opinion that’s largely attributable to a.) focus on polish (i know mark doesn’t like that word, but it’s what fits), and b.) convention over configuation (rather than release a distro with multiple browsers, office productivity suites, and so on - Ubuntu makes some sensible choices to keep things simple). hopefully the big guys can learn from this - SuSE seems to have.

]]> By: Luis http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/08/04/red-hat-v-ubuntu-the-mobily-editorial/#comment-2208 Luis Fri, 04 Aug 2006 23:37:54 +0000 http://redmonk.com/sogrady/wp/?p=986#comment-2208 What I can't believe I haven't seen anyone point out is that both Red Hat and Novell have teams 2-3 times the size of the Ubuntu team doing actual core desktop development work (most of the 'just works' plug and play stuff was done by RH and Novell employees, for example, and the gtk toolkit which Ubuntu uses extensively is developed almost exclusively by Red Hat with Sun and Novell's assistance- no full time paid Canonical developers that I know of), which points to a number of things: * Novell and Red Hat are both pretty bad at publicity in the community- they should be getting tons of credit for doing the foundational work that makes the entire Linux desktop possible, and instead RH gets accused of 'abandoning' the desktop. * It isn't clear that RH or Novell are spending their money terribly well- Xgl is cool, for example, but spending more money on polish would clearly benefit Novell and RH's reputations. * Ubuntu gets a /lot/ of bang for their buck. What I can’t believe I haven’t seen anyone point out is that both Red Hat and Novell have teams 2-3 times the size of the Ubuntu team doing actual core desktop development work (most of the ‘just works’ plug and play stuff was done by RH and Novell employees, for example, and the gtk toolkit which Ubuntu uses extensively is developed almost exclusively by Red Hat with Sun and Novell’s assistance- no full time paid Canonical developers that I know of), which points to a number of things:

* Novell and Red Hat are both pretty bad at publicity in the community- they should be getting tons of credit for doing the foundational work that makes the entire Linux desktop possible, and instead RH gets accused of ‘abandoning’ the desktop.

* It isn’t clear that RH or Novell are spending their money terribly well- Xgl is cool, for example, but spending more money on polish would clearly benefit Novell and RH’s reputations.

* Ubuntu gets a /lot/ of bang for their buck.

]]> By: Anonymous http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/08/04/red-hat-v-ubuntu-the-mobily-editorial/#comment-2207 Anonymous Fri, 04 Aug 2006 20:25:23 +0000 http://redmonk.com/sogrady/wp/?p=986#comment-2207 And what about the SMB space? So many discussions about adoption seem to segment the market into consumer and enterprise. But many of the strengths of Ubuntu seem like they'd play well in smaller businesses... ease of installation, general good hardware compatibility, easy to use desktop... excellent active community support (important when you have minimal or no fulltime IT). And what about the SMB space? So many discussions about adoption seem to segment the market into consumer and enterprise. But many of the strengths of Ubuntu seem like they’d play well in smaller businesses… ease of installation, general good hardware compatibility, easy to use desktop… excellent active community support (important when you have minimal or no fulltime IT).

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