Oh, so you've stopped using the kernel, ext3, Xorg, usb, glib, glibc, gcc, gnome, KDE, nautilus, gconf, dbus, hal, NetworkManager, coreutils, parted, grub, rpm, yum, anaconda, kudzu, ntsysv, and firefox? If not, you haven't left Red Hat. They write, maintain, or make major contributions to all of these areas, and you're using RH whether you're using their branded distribution or not.

I am grateful for all that RH has done and is continuing to do for linux.

The article seems to conflate "desktop" and "desktop virtualization."

RH has been on the desktop since the beginning. They offered Red Hat Linux 1.0 in 1995, all the way up through RHL 9 in 2003. They followed that with 10 bleeding-edge releases of Fedora and five main releases of RH Enterprise Linux. All 100% open, including their own work on utilities, Gnome/KDE, and kernel development. They have done more for linux on the desktop than just about any other company. And now we all reap the benefit, even if we use another distribution like Ubuntu.

So it is nonsense to say RH "returns" to the desktop. They never left.

Now, the article goes on to talk a lot about desktop *virtualization.* That's a totally different topic. Maybe the article should have been titled RH returns to desktop virtualization.

The freedom to sell their own product without interference ended for Netscape when Microsoft choked off their air supply by illegally tying IE to their monopoly OS. Continuing to allow the illegal tying doesn't increase freedom or competition.

Because MS is an OS monopoly that illegally ties its browser to its OS. It's difficult to get away from Windows and IE, because of their anticompetitive behavior. That's the whole point of the EU decision!

What are you talking about? OpenOffice.org implements ODF perfectly well.

Sorry, but it is vendor lock-in when the file format is not published and has to be reverse engineered. That wouldn't be a problem if the software were well written, but it isn't. MS Office isn't even compatible with itself, as it refuses to open old Word files because MS has determined Office can't do it in a secure fashion. OOo is so far ahead of MS Office that OOo can open the old Word files MS Office won't!

The part that doesn't allow one to remove IE.

This is a bit of a strawman. OOo is the same basic experience as MS Word.

Yes, but the same Joe Sixpack couldn't get past the Windows installer either, so that's not exactly distinguishing between OS's. I venture that some linux distributions are comparable or easier to install than Windows, in fact.

What, did you miss the entire 1990's? Microsoft is a monopoly that is illegally tying its browser to its OS. The response is perfectly reasonable -- open up browsers to compete on a level playing field.