Is Red Hat finally getting behind the desktop?

Red Hat seems to be fiinally pushing the open source desktop – but with a twist. Red Hat chief technical officer Brian Stevens, speaking at the company's annual user conference in San Diego claimed that the "desktop platform is dead – it is a dinosaur. We don't believe that reproducing the Windows paradigm in open source adds anything to the user experience," he said.

The gist is that Red Hat will be pushing an "online desktop" claiming that users don't process documents in isolation anymore – all the most interesting apps are online services now such as Google Docs.

Chief executive Matthew Szulik also alluded to the fact that the Linux distributor is now focusing on the desktop, discussing the "the long anticipated pursuit of the desktop". I

It's unclear what exactly Red Hat's push around the client will take but it is clear that it does not intend to take on Microsoft head to head – but rather leapfrog the incumbent by creating a desktop OS that really takes advantage of online applications. Microsoft has been playing lipservice to the idea of online apps but won't do anything to jeopordise its Office cash-cow that is responsible for up to 40 percent of the company's revenues.