Photos: Red Hat's beach party

The main keynote session on Wednesday morning was led by Red Hat chief executive Matthew Szulik, who was on passionate, if slightly vague, form. Although he made a good job of being evangelical about the importance of open source and its potential to improve healthcare and even combat global terrorism, his speech was pretty short of any actual new technology announcements. This was apparently on purpose, as he later claimed in a press conference that he didn't want to simply bang on about how many units of the company's latest operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, had been sold — despite requests from Wall Street analysts to do just that. But, although the lack of marketing spiel was admirable, the lack of a roadmap did not go down too well. Hints were made about a desktop, based on online services, that did not ape areas which Microsoft has already sown-up.

However, despite even more hints about online desktops from Red Hat chief technology officer Brian Stevens, what was actually announced was something quite different. The Global Desktop (GD) — as the product, due to be released next month, will be known — is actually a traditional non-online platform that takes much of its character from the cut-down OS developed for the "One Laptop per Child" project. The GD will be aimed at the developing world and will be available only on Intel hardware, through its cheap PC range, such as the Classmate.