I am doubtful whether RedHat Enterprise Linux Desktop and Suse Enterprise Linux Desktop is meant for notebooks. For example, I brought home a new compaq notebook with x3100 graphics card. But here at home though both RHELD 5 and SLED 10 installed without any hitch, they could not detect my x3100 graphics card.

After some googling I came to know that both have very old xorg and can't support the newer graphics card. What a hell! Does a consumer need to buy old hardware in order to run these so called best products in linux world?

Somebody told both these distros are meant for corporate world (enterprise computing). But then doesn't the corporate world use latest notebooks?

I am sure, sometime in future RHEL 6 and SLED 11 will release. But that does not seem earlier than one year.

To me, whether corporate users are using "the latest laptops" or not is irrelevant. I doubt corporate users need an X3100. Or a GeForce 7600. Or anything anywhere near that. Most corporate users are probably using Intel integrated graphics or equivalent. Why? Cost. So why should Red Hat or Novell develop and support such hardware if it isn't used in its target sector? It would be a bad business move.

Enterprise solutions are designed for stability. High end, newer graphics cards are not going to be reliable or stable. Old is reliable; new is unstable. This is another reason RH and Novell probably don't support higher end graphics chipsets.

Recent news (try Google news search if nothing else) had it that both Novell and RedHat have officially said that their interests are on the server market rather than desktops; it's "easier" for them to stick to the servers and sell such software than desktops, and though both "support" more or less a desktop version of their operating system, it's more like a hobby to them than a real cash job. RedHat for example does support Fedora project, but not financially, and don't offer commercial support for Fedora users. Shortly said, they don't feel they can get enough from desktop systems right now, and if I remember correctly they said the reason behind desktops not being "profitable" enough is that there is not enough demand for desktop Linuxes (commercially) to start dealing with the matter. Shortly said, what people need they can get already. It was even said in the news article that Linux is ready for desktop, but not vice versa - people are not ready for Linux. Commercially, when it comes to RedHat and Novell, of course.

If it genuinely installed 'without a hitch', then it managed to use your graphics card, but in a 'plain, vanilla' mode rather than an accelerated mode. The lack of the accelerated mode would render the system pretty much useless for gamers but very usable for office tasks.

Looked at from this point of view, assuming that you haven't mis-stated the situation, does your argument resolve to 'Why don't the enterprise linux offerings do a better job for gamers'. Well, the answer to that should be obvious - the people who buy these generally regard gaming as a disadvantage not an advantage.

I am not aware of these ever being touted as the best products in the world for every user. Sure, they should have what enterprises need, but where that is different from what an ordinary end user needs, they must prefer the wants of the enterprise user over the ordinary user.

So, for SuSE for example, you get less in the box than with the OpenSuSE release. Why would you pay more for less? Well that less is better tested, better supported, more likely to be stable (in two senses). I know that you may struggle to buy into this 'more is less' philosophy, but it really does have an application.

For my personal use, I genuinely want some of the 'more' so it would be inappropriate for me to use one of the enterprise distros.

I did see an e-mail from a user on a local user group who had taken an enterprise offering and the first thing that he had done was to 'hack' it to include proprietary nvidia software for this kind of situation. I have to say that this seemed one of the most brain-dead things to do that I could imagine (imagination always has been one of my weak spots...). This sacrifices all the extra stuff you get in an end-user distro in the name of stability, and then blows at least the testing and probably the enhanced stability to get the nvidia drivers. Odd.

Actually, X3100 is an integrated chipset from Intel. And as I mentioned earlier, it the graphics chipset that Intel is promoting aggressively.... It's not that like ATI or Nvidia. By the way, linux drivers for latest ATI and Nvidia are available at the manufacturer's website....

The two distros you mentioned are for business and enterprise desktops/workstations, so they don't have the latest and greatest software due to stability issues. If you want something that supports the latest and greatest, you can use their non commercial releases e.g. the latest Fedora or openSUSE releases.

I suppose if you were a paying customer using X3100 cards, they would include the proper driver in the package as a service and they would provide support as well. The OS is free. They charge for service. This means they will do what you want. They probably don't have any customer who asked for those drivers.
If you don't want to pay and have what you want, don't pick an entreprise distro, but a community one.

Thanks for clearing that up. I'm mainly an nVidia guy, and I know ATi has been naming their products "Xxxxx" for a while now. Intel changes its naming conventions so often...I guess they feel like they have to make up for 10 years of "Pentium X."

Let me tell you something. Actually I have used the latest Mandriva and Fedora. Both of them have support for all my device drivers. To me both Fedora and Mandriva seem bloated. But from my previous experience with RHELD and SLED I know these two are fast, responsive and less bloated. Only this graphics drivers issue drags me back!

Having said that, I wish RH and Novell people with bring out their next release soon. I just wonder what happened to RHGD (RedHat Global Desktop) plan?

RHGD has been delayed so many times. From what I understand, the Red Hat Global Desktop is not meant as a consumer oriented desktop distro. Its meant for resellers in emerging markets.