Red Hat to bundle Eazel

Red Hat yesterday said it will bundle Eazel's Nautilus 'Linux user interface for the rest of us' software with future releases of the open source OS.

Something of a coup, this, since Red Hat dominates the Linux market. With Sun gearing up to bundle Nautilus with Solaris and Dell choosing the software as its own preferred Linux user interface, Eazel now stands a good chance of seeing its code become the de facto standard open source UI desktop.

Nautilus essentially brings together local, network and Web-hosted files - be they applications or documents - and services, such as online storage, and presents them to the user through a single, consistent front-end. All of it is designed to sit on top of the next major release of the Gnome desktop environment.

The services side is where Eazel hopes to make money, using the free Nautilus as a gateway to offer Linux users paid-for, Net-based services. It's a canny move in that Nautilus ought to make the open source OS far more friendly to non-techies, boosting both the operating system's user base and, in turn, the number of potential customers of Eazel's services.

Eazel also announced the availability of the third and final preview release of Nautilus before the code ships in its final, 1.0 form. ®

Related Link

You can get Nautilus Preview Release 3 here

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