Following Microsoft's hijack of the main virtualisation options, Red Hat turns its back on Xen

Red Hat's CEO, Jim Whitehurst, spoke out strongly recently against the possibility of Linux ever taking over the desktop computers of the world.  His comments may reflect Red Hat's increasing distance from reality, but I don't think they're grounded in facts.  Here's why.

For nearly the last three years Oracle has been offering its own supported version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux - all the while claiming binary compatibility. As it turns out though, Oracle and Red Hat don't agree on few key things, like file systems and virtualization.

Open standards and the need for interoperability on the cloud will not necessarily drive the adoption of open-source software, said a Red Hat executive.

In 2007, Fedora, Red Hat's community Linux distribution, hit an all-time low. Two years later though, Paul Frields, Fedora project leader, declares that there has been "a major up-tick in Fedora involvement over the last 6 months.

Does this mean that Red Hat will be getting back into the Linux desktop business? That's the question I posed to Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens, in a phone call after the Red Hat/KVM press conference, and he told me that, "Yes. Red Hat will indeed be pushing the Linux desktop again."

"25 years after Stallman first set the GNU project in motion, what have these ideals achieved, and what can we do to ensure the future of free software? Linux Format spoke to him to find out..."