> Ever since RH split out workstation and server versions of the OS

Didn't that get undone with RHEL 8?

You're right. And that's something I still don't quite understand.

I'd really like to know how many workstation licenses Redhat really sells. It's been so long, I didn't even realize that they still had a separate workstation license available for purchase. When you have the same distribution setup for Servers and Workstations, it seems to me that one of those flavors is going to dominate and the other will be eventually be neglected. Who are the users that are buying and using Workstation licenses?

But, when it comes down to it, I still don't see why they would want to package an Office Suite for RHEL. Or, more importantly, why a user would want to use it. RHEL is designed for stability. It's a great server OS that's well supported. Because of this, it's also known to have older versions of libraries and programs. This is okay, because many new features and fixes get backported, but it's still usually an older (stable) version of software that's included. Why would you want to have an older version of an Office Suite? Why would they want to package a newer (and riskier) version that can be installed on a server? It just doesn't make that much sense to me... it's a fundamental dichotomy between what makes a good server OS vs a good workstation OS.

Note: this give and take has been going on with Linux on the server vs Linux on the Desktop for decades. It's probably going to keep going on for decades. The things that one wants for one use case isn't what makes sense for other use cases. This is why we have different distributions, which is a good thing. The part I don't get is why RH would want to merge the two back together. Which is why I see the idea of deprecating workstation applications (as packaged by RHEL) in favor of Flatpak versions of them as a good thing from the RHEL point of view.