The Raleigh, North Carolina-based Linux distributor has been rethinking its desktop strategy since the launch of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux server products and believes that the time is now right to tackle Microsoft’s dominant position.

Especially the European and also the Asian marketplaces we believe are ripe for an alternative, Red Hat’s chairman and CEO Matthew Szulik told a press conference in London. The growing adoption of Linux on the server side has given many companies and governments the confidence to extend that benefit to the front office.

As well as improved market conditions, the company is also now looking to push the advantages of more mature Linux desktop applications, he said.

Some of the key components we didn’t think were mature enough, he said, citing the Mozilla browser, X Window security, and the Openoffice.org productivity suite. Those areas have improved, and we will deliver this as a managed service to the enterprise and governments.

The new Red Hat Desktop 3 (which is numbered to fit in with Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux products) is a uni-processor version of the operating system with maximum memory of 4GB. It supports Intel Corp’s X86, Itanium and EM64T 64-bit extension processors, and well as Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s 32- and 64-bit processors.

The product includes the Evolution mail browser, Openoffice.org application suite, Mozilla browser and GAIM instant messaging application, and also supports Adobe Systems Inc’s Acrobat, Macromedia Inc’s Flash, Java, Citrix Systems Inc’s ICA Client and RealNetworks Inc’s RealPlayer.

Due for general release on May 15 the product will be available in packages of 10 or 50 units for mass deployments with Red Hat Network Proxy Server for remote systems management or Red Hat Network Satellite Server for local systems management.

The Proxy Starter Pack costs $2,500 and includes entitlements for 10 Red Hat Desktops, 10 desktop management modules, one Red Hat Network Proxy Server, 30 days phone help desk support and one year web-based help desk support. An Extension Pack expands support to 50 Desktop and management module entitlements.

The Satellite Starter Pack costs $13,500 and includes 50 Red Hat Desktop and management module entitlements, as well as one Red Hat Network Satellite Server, 30 days phone support and one year web support.

Szulik admitted that there will be limitations in the initial take-up of Linux on the desktop, but maintained that Red Hat is in a position to repeat the success it has had on the server.

There’s a large hardware activity refresh that’s going on, he said. It’s not our expectation that company A is going to take 40,000 desktops tomorrow but we are talking about numerous very large companies around the world who are thinking about pilots.

He added that it will be up to Red Hat and other open source desktop vendors to challenge existing assumptions about desktop computing.

There has been one incumbent with 96% of the market. It’s very easy to get conditioned that that’s the only source. Who knows when Longhorn will come out, but we think there are a lot of companies and the enterprise side and the government side who will look for alternatives.

Our challenge will be challenging the way people have historically thought about having a fixed device, he added, highlighting Red Hat’s recent embedded Linux partnership with Wind River Systems Inc, through which it will also be targeting enterprise demand for thin client, PDA and Internet-based access.

Our customers are now talking about thin clients, our customers are talking about accessing data from anywhere. Because one vendor holds 96% of the market I’ve observed there’s apathy in the market about what that alternative might look like.

While developments focused on desktop architecture and strategy changes may be the future of Red Hat Desktop, a quicker route to market today is via the tried and tested desktop PC vendors. Red Hat does not have any of the usual suspects on board at this stage but is in negotiation with Dell Inc, Hewlett Packard Co and IBM Corp, Szulik said.

The company has some competition in this regard from Sun Microsystems Inc and particularly Novell Inc, which in March signed an agreement to put its SuSE Linux across its portfolio of business desktop PCs.

On the subject of integration with existing Microsoft products and protocols, Szulik said that he was confident that the new breed of open source applications were up to the task, and that Red Hat’s relationship with EMC Corp’s VMware virtualization subsidiary would help maintain interoperability.

He maintained however that the debate about desktop systems needed to be focused on the bigger picture. The cost of administration, the cost of management and the security requirements will become a driving force, not which application has the best spell checker, he said.

As for the potential of Microsoft porting its Office application suite to Linux, Szulik said: That would be a very positive thing. Steve Ballmer hasn’t called me on that lately though.

This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire