I don't know anyone still using Red Hat on the desktop. Most people I know using Linux seem to be sticking to Ubuntu.<p>But the excuse from Red Hat sounds more like the result of a deal with Microsoft. It sounds like Microsoft paid them to send the message that Linux is not a viable alternative to Windows on the desktop (and perhaps scare companies from considering a switch to Linux as they can reasonably anticipate other vendors to back out as well).
hmmm . . . sounds more like, as desktop Linux takes off in the home market, Red Hat is responding to increasing pressure by reminding folks they're not in the consumer desktop business. I've been using CentOS 5 on a server, and during initial install, I went ahead and loaded the desktop packages, in case I ever want to go to runlevel 5, which I did for some of the initial, local setup. I find the gnome desktop entirely satisfactory. It's just a gnome desktop. Just like Ubuntu is a gnome desktop. Oh, and SuSE, yeah, it has a gnome desktop available as well. Come to think of it, pretty much every Linux distro has a gnome desktop and a KDE desktop, and an XFCE desktop. What burning motivation would Red Hat have to get into the desktop business?