Triplesourced

Red Hat has launched its answer to Salesforce.com's Application Exchange portal. Known as RHX (Red Hat Exchange) the online portal is positioned to provide IT professionals with a one-stop shop to find open source applications that are optimised to work on top of the Red Hat Linux operating system. So far RHX only has 14 open source application providers signed up but Red Hat director of online services Matt Mattox claimed that the relatively small number of app providers is actually a good thing – as users are not overwhelmed with providers.

"We see this as an investment in the rising tide of greater open source ecosystem," said Mattox.

Red Hat pre-announced the application exchange back in March when it announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

You might think that the only reason people wear IT vendor clothing is because they get it free. Guess again – as Red Hat's well stocked shop at this year's user summit in San Diego shows – people will actually pay for this stuff. And not just T-Shirts – Red Hat has slapped its logo on just about every product you could imagine from golf balls to surf boards!

The answer to my previous blog entry it turns out is yes – Red Hat is getting behind the desktop and not just with one strategy but three.

Some rather frustrating news management from the Linux specialist saw journalists receive hints at the keynotes this morning of some kind of desktop push. Sure that we would get some more facts at the press conference immediately following the keynotes – most of us held off filing a story – waiting to have the desktop hints made more solid. But instead we were treated to more obfuscation and hints – leaving the conundrum – was Red Hat not saying anything concrete because it didn't have anything to say or because it was waiting for a specific time to announce the news?

Well turns out it was the latter and Red Hat has a three-pronged programme for the desktop made up of a product for emerging markets Red Hat Global Desktop, another aimed at the enterprise - Red Hat Enterprise Desktop 5, and the final string in the bow – the much vaunted OLPC project. The full news story will follow soon.

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.

The first keynote of the Red Hat conference here in San Diego kicked off with a passionate speech from chief executive Matthew Szulik who asserted that some of the blame for the terrorist threat that many developed nations are facing, lies with the fact many developing countries have been left behind when it comes to the digital revolution – particularly when it comes to education.

"One of the things I am pushing is the call for large scale national open source initiatives – we have to provide the low-cost platforms – the hazard of nations that have not been brought into 21st century networks are manifesting themselves in worldwide terror," he said

Red Hat has been heavily involved in the One Laptop per Child project (OLPC) which aims to provide developing nations with access to a cheap PC for around $100.

Szulik also couldn't resist taking a side-swipe at Microsoft alluding to the time it has take to get Vista out of the door.

"…being able to produce four world class enterprise releases when our competitors struggled to get one out in the same time – you decide, you decide."