Red Hat to roll out local language desktop Linux by October

The penguin will soon speak in four Indian languages, including Hindi, as Red Hat India rolls out its local language desktop Linux OS in October. This initiative will be part of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) framework. Worldwide, Red Hat has Linux desktops in 10 languages. "Once the technology is finalized, then having different languages is just a matter of translation and support of the fonts. We will be working on Unicode and will release local languages in phases, as this is the best way to take Linux to desktops in non-metros cities," says Amit Boraskar, Head-Alliances, Red Hat India. 

He feels that Linux will play a major role in bridging the digital divide, because hardware prices are falling and if open source software is made available, then the prices will drop further, making PCs even more cheaper. The company is also pushing RHEL, which is its effort to come up with a standardized framework on which partners, vendors and developers can build commercial applications across various layers. 

Red Hat will invest a lot towards this initiative so that the company and its partners can adopt this framework to build an architecture with more scalable and secure platforms. Today RHEL support almost seven architectures. The framework will also be extended to various vendors to plug in their applications seamlessly to create a open source model for customers. 

"We are trying to move from being a pure-play Linux company to offer more solutions on it," reveals Amit. "This is why we have acquired Sistina software, a proprietary storage solutions company in the US. The idea was to give customers a total open source storage solution in addition to its Linux enterprise offerings," adds he.

The good news for solution providers is that they wil finally get a mature platform to build or integrate applications. "So, partners won't have to invent the code or figure out what drivers will work with it. We will offer them the complete platform certified by various hardware vendors," adds
Amit. 

Red Hat is looking out to build partnerships with solution providers who can build applications around RHEL for security, storage and other infrastructure technologies. It is also working with partners to certify their applications as well. The company has also extended the release date of its products from 12 to 18 months to give it enough time to train partners on it, certify them and also set benchmarks. 

VINITA BHATIA