Don’t read Red Hat’s latest blog on its desktop policy unless you’ve just chugged a few bottles of Red Bull. In a blog update on its desktop product direction, it says, ” We have no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the consumer market in the foreseeable future.” I’ll bet I’m not the only caffeine-deprived reader who skipped — or might skip — right over that word, consumer. Then I scan down to the bold print which reads: ” our desktop product plans for 2008 and 2009 include …” and thinking, “Huh?” OK, so this is a reader error. Still …

Red Hat then lists three initiatives, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop, which, contrary to its name, is a niche product for specialzed uses in manufacturing and other verticals. Not what the term “enterprise” brings to mind at all. The other two are Fedora, the free, community-based desktop version, and, finally, we’re getting to the news here, the Red Hat Global Desktop (RHGD), a desktop project currently in development targeted to countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America that are severely undersupplied with computers.

Announced last June and stalled by marketing and assorted other issues, this project, which is still not a done deal. Companies often fall behind in their projects so that’s hardly a crime. But couldn’t Red Hat have simply blogged about the news: it’s late with the Global Desktop project, and be done with it instead of making readers embark on a verbal treasure hunt? And, by the way, mum’s the word on when this initiative is going to happen. It would be nice to know, after all that time wasted.

Fedora 7 just launched the other day, so let’s throw up a handy tip for installing VMware Server, shall we?

HowtoForge’s into on the install:

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install VMware Server on a Fedora 7 desktop system. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems (”virtual machines̶ such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system. This has the benefit that you can run multiple operating systems on the same hardware which saves a lot of money, and you can move virtual machines from one VMware Server to the next one (or to a system that has the VMware Player which is also free).

Also, with VMware Server you can let your old Windows desktop (that you previously converted into a VMware virtual machine with VMware Converter, as described in this tutorial: http://www.howtoforge.com/vmware_converter_windows_linux) run under your Fedora desktop. This can be useful if you depend on some applications that exist for Windows only, or if you want to switch to Linux slowly.

Step-by-step instructions and some glossy screenshots of the VMware on Fedora 7 install in action can be found at the HowtoForge web site.

Fedora 7 went live today and I forgot to buy it a cake. Next year, I swear.

Red Hat’s press release on the news:

The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc. sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, today announced that the latest version of its distribution, Fedora 7, is now available. The Fedora Project provides the best of next-generation open source technologies and, in its latest version, features a new build capacity that allows for the creation of custom distributions. Fedora 7 now offers a completely open source build process that greatly simplifies the creation of appliances that can be targeted to meet individual needs.

Fedora 7 provides the first appliance development platform that is 100 percent open source with an entirely free distribution build toolchain. The Fedora 7 source code is hosted in a public version control system, the RPMs are built on an external build system and the distributions are built with an external, open source compose tool that allows access by the entire Fedora community.

Through Fedora 7, the community is given an enhanced role that encourages greater openness and collaboration. As a result of its flexible, public build environment, Fedora 7 provides users with the ability to customize like never before. With these capabilities, combined with live CD, DVD and USB technology, the possibilities for appliance creation are endless. After customization, Fedora can be loaded onto various forms of bootable media, allowing users to run their operating system without a hard disk installation.

There’s also some virtualization news to be had, as Fedora 7 features Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and Qemu virtualization technologies (in addition to Xen). This makes sense given the inclusion of KVM in the mainline kernel. All implementations can be managed using the Fedora graphical virtualization manager.

On the community level, Fedora 7’s new single repository is accessible to Red Hat employees and community members alike, giving the community more influence over Fedora than ever before, Red Hat said in its statement.