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Remember, you can get the free version of RedHat from CentOS

http://www.centos.org/

No silly annual payments just to get support.

I personally use knoppix / debian since RedHat started charging for support.

People need to know CentOS is out there.

If you prefer something that looks like RH but evolves at a more stately pace, may I suggest CentOS. This is RHEL built from the the Open Sources.

Ever hear of CentOS? Try that and you will save money.

Flamebait?

I invite you to check out http://www.centos.org/

CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.) CentOS is free. CentOS is now accepting donations via PayPal, please click the button for more information.

Also check out:

http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.ph p?id=2

DeadRat legal made them change command line utility names (e.g., if it was redhat-do-foo they had to rename it to bar-do-foo), remove any reference to RedHat from the home page, and so forth. CentOS IS RHEL minus the trademarks.

Focus on modding up, not down, especially when someone is posting the truth. Sheesh.

Flamebait?

I invite you to check out http://www.centos.org/

CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.) CentOS is free. CentOS is now accepting donations via PayPal, please click the button for more information.

Also check out:

http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.ph p?id=2

DeadRat legal made them change command line utility names (e.g., if it was redhat-do-foo they had to rename it to bar-do-foo), remove any reference to RedHat from the home page, and so forth. CentOS IS RHEL minus the trademarks.

Focus on modding up, not down, especially when someone is posting the truth. Sheesh.

First: If you can't afford to buy your software, you might reconsider whether you should be calling yourself a "good business woman" - just a thought.

Second: http://www.us.debian.org/ http://centos.org/ (RedHat clone). Both tested, stable and production ready. Many others, use a search engine. I'm sure your IT Consultant can tell you how. However, if your IT Consultant told you there are no production Free/Open Source operating systems, you need to find an honest one.

Ever heard of CentOS?

You do realize that when you buy Red Hat Enterprise, you're actually paying for technical support.

RHE is based on CentOS (http://www.centos.org/ It's also my favorite distro for both desktops and servers! So go try it out.

My partner and I work with video... and we were sick of backing up our projects to tape.

This is what I just set up for our home office.

I had a old server case (Antec) with a p4 2.8Ghz in it. It had previously had a raid5 array of 3 x 40GB disks + a hot spare that was used for video production.

I added a gigabit ethernet card, a cheap 2 port SATA controller and an external sata back plate (to connect one of the SATA channels externally). I purchased 3 x 250Gb seagate HDDs and put 2 of them into these SATA only (no USB no Firwire) external enclosures. Because they have minimal electronics they are very cheap ($AU55) and because it it SATA all the way very fast.

I installed centos and partitioned the drive with 4 partitions (/ /boot /swap /home). I used samba to share a user under /home which we can write to from our Macs, Windows and Linux laptops.

I disconnected the internal drive and installed centos again on each of the external drives to ensure that the partition structure is the same (I know i could have used DD but i didn't). Then I reconnected the internal and left one external connected.

Every 2 hours (it's not left on 24/7) the machine uses rsync to backup the internal drive to the external drive. It writes a log which include a df -h to the share so all users can confirm the backup process is working. Each week we swap the external drive for the spare which we keep in a fireproof box.

If the hdd in the machine ever fails all we need to do is swap it for the most up to date external. As we fill the 250GB we will archive off projects to offline pairs of external drives.

This gives us a double redundant simple to restore file server with true backup.

To do this I mostly used this howto

Cheers

Nick

I still have some issues, especially with speed. It takes WAY to long to backup 100GB over the network... I figured it would take a few hours... but it seems to take closer to a day... not sure if it is the PCI bus not dealing with the back up to disc happening at the same time as the large file transfer over the gigabit network... or a poor configuration of samba/smb...

any hints?

del.icio.us/cicada for more useful links on this topic.

I'm amazed asterisk@home wasn't the first thing posted here. Don't be fooled by the @Home part. This is a full fledged install of asterisk that is only limited by the hardware you install it on. You can have a working PBX in an hour. I'm planning to install this at all my remote sites (6 of them) with free extension call throughout and then plan to install it at my main location (150 phones) and have it all interconnected. A VERY powerful solution.

(Note: I just copied the rest of this from the handbook so I don't have to retype it all)

The Asterisk@Home project enables the home (or small office) user to quickly set up a full featured Asterisk PBX with a web based interface in about an hour on a dedicated PC. Even if you are new to Linux, Asterisk@home handles that by handling the complete Linux install for you. In order to get up and running all you need to do is download the Asterisk@Home .iso and burn it to a CD. Boot that CD and you will get a very complete Asterisk and Linux install.

Asterisk@Home provides a nicely integrated install of some of the best software from the Asterisk community, such as the Asterisk Management Portal, which provides an intuitive Web GUI for configuring asterisk, and the Flash Operators Panel, which lets you see and control your Asterisk PBX in realtime, and FAX support through span-dsp.

What is included in Asterisk@Home 2.0:

Linux CentOS 4.2 - http://www.centos.org/ - CentOS is 100% compatible rebuild of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), in full compliance with Red Hat's redistribution requirements. CentOS 2, 3, and 4 are built from publically available open source SRPMS provided by Red Hat. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendor's redistribution policies and aims to be 100% binary compatible. CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork. CentOS is for people who need an enterprise level operating system with stability to match without the associated cost and support.
Apache Web Server (2.0.52)
MySQL Database (4.1.12) - SQL database for Call Detail Reports and optional configuration information.
Php (4.3.9)
Asterisk 1.2 - http://www.asterisk.org/ An open source software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange (PBX). A PBX connects one or more telephones on one side to one or more telephone lines on the other side. A good example of this is a small company with 100 internal telephones sharing 20 outgoing/incoming telephone lines. A PBX can be more cost effective then having 100 direct telephone lines.
AMP 1.10.010 BETA - http://www.coalescentsystems.ca/ - Asterisk Management Panel is a web based GUI that allows you to easily manage Asterisk without having to edit sometimes complicated text configuration files. This package is can really make a difference in learning and configuring asterisk easily.
Flash Operator Panel 0.24 - http://www.asternic.org/ - Flash Operator Panel is a switchboard type application for the Asterisk PBX. It runs on a web browser with the flash plugin. It is able to display information about your PBX activity in real time. You can see what all of your extensions, trunks, and conferences are doing. You can also hang up, transfer, initate a call or create a conference call.
Festival Speech Engine version 1.96 - http://festvox.org/festival/ - Festival is a speech synthesis system. It allows you to enter text that the Asterisk@Home server "reads out loud" to anyone calling the server. Using this, you can be sure the same voice is used across the whole asterisk server.
SugarCRM with Cisco XML Services interface + Click to Dial - http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ - SugarCRM is designed to a be a complete customer/contact manager. Using SugarCRM we can manage all types of communications (faxes, te

You'll mostly see it on managed web servers for resellers.

That might even go down with the rise of CentOS.

If so, why not use CentOS which appears to have more developers, infrastructure, and users?

In the 2005 Linux Journal User's Choice, Ubuntu won 1st place and CentOS won 2nd place.

Or they could just have used a completely free version of redhat enterprise by Centos and several others..

Works nicely on my desktop.

Back in summer of 98 [...]Redhat didn't agree with me...

This was the early RedHat 5.x days; RedHat had a lot of problems at the time because it had just moved from libc5 to glibc. glibc had a lot of issues which made the distribution pretty buggy. During this period, I stuck to RedHat 4.2; RedHat was really good about making sure RH4.2 had security and other upgrades until their glibc distribution became stable.

The Fedoras are really buggy but CentOS is a good stable RHEL clone; I'm using Centos 3.6 right now and it's pretty good.

Red Hat Linux ES 4 with 1 year subscription $350
Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9 with 1 year subscription $269
Community ENTerprise linux Operating System 4.2 $0.00, basically RHEL4 without the need for a paid subscription for updated packages.

Since then, Intel has made a number of "hacks" to the i686 architecture.
One is HyperThreading which tries to keep its pipes full by using its
control units to virtualize two instruction schedulers, registers, etc...
In a nutshell, it's a nice way to get "out-of-order and register
renaming for almost free." Other than basic coherency checking as
necessary in silicon, it "passes the buck" to the OS, leveraging its
context switching (and associated overhead) to manage some details.

That's why HyperThreading can actually be slower for some applications,
because they do not thread, and the added overhead in _software_
results in reduced processing time for the applications.

check out http://www.centos.org/

(let alone know where to get it [nsa.gov]?)

Getting SELinux is easy. Some distributions (notably Fedora and CentOS) have it installed and enabled by default, and I suspect that anyone who has done any amount of research into "hardening" their system has heard of SELinux.

He's going to provide support for 50 million computers at 10 cents each? Would be quite tough.

If there is no support involved, I'd like to provide South Korea with Linux for 50 million computers in the form of either CentOS, Fedora or Ubuntu for free and free with "community support".

What's the deal?

When I upgraded from 4.x to 5.0, the OS ran fine, but 2/3 of the apps I built from /usr/ports either wouldn't compile, or wouldn't run properly.

Typical. That's why I use Debian Stable and Redhat Enterprise Linux knock-offs ( CentOS). Everthing works perfectly, at all times.

Sorry but you shouldn't believe everything you read.

The Red Hat Enterprise distribution includes some trademarks, logos and what not, but it is in no way proprietary. You can download all the source code directly from Red Hat's own ftp servers for free. And you can even create your own linux distribution based off the source, however, you must remove the trademark logos and what not before you distribute as you are not Red Hat.

If you don't believe then try checking out http://centos.org/
Or just peruse the Red Hat website and read their licensing agreements for their products.

It seems you've bought into FUD spread by both the anti-OSS crowd saying "...Red Hat is no different, its proprietary just like Windows..." and the Red Hat bashing linux elitists "...Red Hat is the next Microsoft, they took our linux and made it proprietary...". Its all BS.

burnin

Yeah, and Centos should be able to say that they are "based on the freely available SRPMS of Redhat Enterprise Linux". Oh wait, they can't either. Trademark's a bitch.

I certainly hope they don't try and go the route SCO went. Wouldn't exactly be learning from the fatal mistakes of your enemies, eh? As long as they use open source code in their OS, they will have to release their source. Which gives life to projects like CentOS.

• CentOS
  
• White Box Linux
  

It seems that, if they derive their distro from RedHat's, then there should be some perfectly legal way of explaining that fact in their advertising, on their website, etc.

Still, I wonder if they talked to RedHat about it.

We understand that our client has failed to receive a response from you to its correspondence, including its letter of January 7, 2005, and, therefore has requested that we follow up with you to bring this matter to closure.

The more I see stuff like this and the methlabs.org web site situation, I see a need for a book or document that gives a crash course in management and simple legal matters. I think this is going to be more important as open source projects grow. There's a lot CentOS could have done to prevent or resolve the situation they found themselves in. There's a lot that methlabs people could have done to protect their donations and servers. I thought stuff like this was common sense but I guess it isn't. Some chapters on dealing with end users and managing developers probably wouldn't hurt either.

Here's a "living, breathing" example of the impossibility of Red Hat "becoming the next Microsoft":

http://centos.org/

Debian/kFreeBSD has its web site's pages copyrighted by SPI, web pages which mention that "Debian" is a registered trademark without mentioning the status of "FreeBSD".

But the people I blame are the directors of the FreeBSD Foundation which now owns the FreeBSD trademark at least as far as it applies to "CD ROMs featuring an archive of computer programs which may be accessed for use archived on a CDROM." (And it appears the FreeBSD Foundation is working to expand the applicability of the FreeBSD trademark.) But there is already a Debian/kFreeBSD iso.

Considering that a simple cease and desist was sufficient to force CentOS to scrub references on its web site to the phrase "Red Hat" and other such trademarks (other than apparently a link to someone else's article), I am baffled what either Debian/kFreeBSD or the FreeBSD Foundation is waiting for.

The job of a linux distributor (such as Red Hat, Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu etc) is primarily that of assembling a large quantity of free and open source software into an easy to use and pre-configured package. While they may write and contribute some of their own software to the mix, and do some customisation and bug fixes of their own, 95%+ of the software you see in a linux distro will be common to other distrabutions.

I don't use Red Hat or Fedora myself, so could be wrong about the below, but... Fedora is developed by the community (Red Hat also helps to develop it) and is kept fairly up-to date with new software releases. Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses snapshot of Fedora as a core, keeps it stable (ie doesn't update it that often, just bug fixes) and adds a few bits of proprietary software and adds in the support contract (most people buy Red Hat for the support). If you want Red Hat without the support, and the RH branding, then maybe CentOS is what you are looking for.

I would personally suggest Ubuntu Linux, which is Debian based, its fairly well polished and most things will work straight out of the box, so you shouldn't need too much in the way of support to get it setup (Though I have had some difficulties with the 64 bit version). Even things like Java, ATI/nVidia drivers and multimedia codexs can be gotten via apt-get (you may need the extras repository for some of these). If you need paid support, Canonical will support Ubuntu for $100 USD per computer per year (I haven't used them myself, so can't say how good they are).

If you want free support, then goggle is your friend, as is reading the documentation, searching goggle groups, asking on mailing lists and visiting IRC channels. The only cost is the time and effort to find the answers for yourself (which doubles as a good education in Linux). You are not guaranteed an answer, but will usually find one, nor a time limit on how long it will take to find or receive an answer. This is the method that most individuals actually use, though it does require that you are willing to learn. In a business where time is money, it is possible that paid support may work out cheaper than your own time in searching google (it depends on how much your time is worth compared to the time saved via a support contract), but in comparison, I will ask you when was the last time you phoned up Microsoft and had them tell you how to fix your problem.

As for the Mozilla Corporation, they are very new and haven't done anything that I could comment on, but I see it as very, very unlikely that its formation will have a detrimental effect to the development of free and open source Firefox. We already have Netscape as a commercial company that takes Firefox, gives a customised setup, adds alot of their own branding to the package and throws in a few proprietary components and calls it Netscape 8. Firefox is not the poor "free starter edition" cousin to Netscape 8. As long as people are intrested in Firefox, then it will continue to be developed and it will always remain free.

For businesses specialising in free and open source software, the "switchero" is fairly uncommon. FLOSS licences actually prevent people from doing a "switchero" on existing software, if its been releases as FLOSS then that version will be free forever. With non copyleft (ie GPL) licences (or when exceptions are made in the licence), then someone can make a proprietary fork of the project and future versions of that fork may not be free, though others are still free to continue to work on the FLOSS version. This can also happen with copyleft or GPL software when only one person, or one group, owns ALL the copyright to the software and can thus change the licence for future versions (such as PHPedit). In many cases, where the software has been developed by the community, there are too many copyright holders for this

One reason could be that Red Hat makes the SRPMS for their RHEL line of operating systems available to anyone. This has allowed projects like CentOS to become so popular. Some people like having the option of using a RHEL-like operating system on servers that they know they can't commit big $$ to. You can install CentOS where it makes sense and pay for RHEL when appropriate. With SUSE Linux Enterprise you can use the operating system on several computers, I think, but you can't use the updates they provide. Which would be fine if the SRPMS were made available but.........

If you need to use Linux you can always run CentOS and save the cash. Or you could just use FreeBSD instead.

• Decide what OSes you'll install
• Mac OS X Intel disk (the one that came with the Intel Mac)
• Windows XP SP2 CD (if you want XP - we tested with a already SP2'ed disc)
• Windows XP CD Key (obviously, just being safe...)
• CentOS 4 CD's (or your favorite distro - we got kernel panic's every time we tried Fedora Core 4 and CentOS worked great)
• CD Ejection Device (otherwise known as a paper clip - just in case...)

Notes:

• You're going to need a Linux install so you can use it's boot loader for your OS selection menu.
• We had major issues with Fedora Core 4. At first we thought it was an issue with HyperThreading support, and we did a "linux ht=off" at boot. This worked once but never again?!? Joel was also too lazy to make some Slackware CD's with SATA support so we just went with CentOS since we had it handy.
• Keep the CD Ejection Device handy - Apple thought it was a good idea to remove the button from the DVD drive so the only way to eject a disc if you need to is with the OS or the CD Ejection Device. So if you can't boot into an OS and you want to remove the CD you'll need that...

Quick Guide: - Return to Top
If you're like us and hate reading through pages of crap to get things done here is the quick version of what you'll need to do. We'll explain this step-by-step down below.

• Boot from the Mac OS X Install DVD
• Use the Disk Utility within the Installer to delete ALL partitions
• Use the drop down and select 3 partitions (if you're doing OSX/Windows/Linux) - YOU REALLY ONLY NEED A MAX OF 3!
• Change the size of the partitions as you desire (make sure to leave room for all your OSes)
• Set the first and third partition to "free space" - DO NOT FORMAT THEM!
• Set the second partition to Mac Journeled - name it "OS X" (or what you want)
• Write the partiton table
• Exit the Disk Utility
• Install OS X on the partition you created above (if you have more than 1 disk you did something wrong!)
• Once OS X is installed and working put in the Windows XP CD and reboot
• At boot make sure to hit a key so the machine boots from the XP CD
• Create an NTFS partition on the first empty partition - you'll see the other two - ignore them. The partition you'll create will be called "E:", don't worry...
• Exit the XP installer (AFTER you've created the partition - DO NOT proceed with setup).
• Restart XP Setup (remember to press enter on reboot)
• Now the first partition will be called C: - in

So we shouldn't expect to see any patches for any of those over the next few months? Is that what you're saying? Everything has been tested to perfection? Because that's not the reality that we all know and love. They must have really done some bitchin work in FC4 in order to make Perfection a feature. They must have "texted" the hell out of it, eh?

Seriously, give CentOS a try for a community driven RHEL equivalent with fast patch releases: http://www.centos.org.

The latest release for WBEL4 was in May 2005. It is the equivalent of RHEL4.

As a company, it serves its own best interests. It has always been honorable in doing so.

You will not find Red Hat "stealing" OSS code, compiling it into proprietary work, and not telling anybody. You won't find them attempting to "extend" open code with proprietary extensions without releasing those extensions, too.

They pay for a good, healthy staff of developers that work almost solely on GPL and otherwise released code. They release source binaries as though all their stuff was GPL, even with projects that are BSD-ish licensed.

It's not that difficult to take their source RPMs and create your own "Enterprise Linux", as done by Scientific Linux, Cent O/S, and (my favorite) Whitebox Linux.

I don't like that they don't support good old "RedHat Linux" like they used to, but as a company, RedHat has been nothing but good for the community. If you choose to have a hissy, then enjoy your hissy, and move on to Debian/Gentoo/LFS/Ubuntu/Mandrake/Whatever/YALD (Yet Another Linux Distro) to your heart's content.

But, I see no sign that RedHat is doing anything evil at all.

As much heat as Woody gets from the Slashdot crowd, I think it is a good idea to have a stable release that doesn't update very quickly. Keep in mind that, as "old" as Debian is, it was released in 2002. It is no older than Windows XP (2001-2002 release) and is a good deal younger than Windows 2000 (1999 release). One of the servers I have an account on is a RedHat 7.2 machine, which is of the same era as the first Woody release. While I develop on Fedora Core three, I make sure my software compiles as is on a RedHat 6.2 system (2000 era).

For servers and corporate desktops, an update every three years is a frequent update. I am glad that Debian has been current with security updates on this three-year-old release; I would rather have that than the updgrade treadmill Fedora has me on. (The Fedora Legacy project seems to be comatose) In fact, I'm going off of the treadmill--my next Linux will be CentOS (a no-cost generic clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) which will allow me to have sane updates--once a year or two instead of once every six months.

The program is licensed under the GPL, with all that entails. The logo, however, is not. Thus, I can hack and rerelease Firefox to my heart's content, but I can't use Mozilla's logo on it.

In the same way, RedHat distributes a branded operating system that uses a lot of GPL software. But you or I cannot just make our own "RedHat Linux" based on it - not without feeling the warm breath of lawyers on our necks. There are, nonetheless, repackaged and renamed operating systems based on RedHat, such as CentOS (who were recently enjoined from using trademarks of said "prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor" on their site).

Although I find it annoying that, for example, Ubuntu's version of Firefox comes with a substandard icon as a result, the concept of the logo as a kind of proof of authenticity seems like a reasonable idea - it makes it clear whether or not a particular version comes from the Mozilla Organization or not.

While I have not done a migration from RHEL to CentOS, I have cross migrated from Whitebox, and Tao to CentOS and back. I am willing to bet the process from RHEL to CentOS is just as easy.

Checkout these instructions on migrating from Whitebox to CentOS

This is taken directly from CentOS.org's page.

CentOS : Community ENTerprise Operating System

CentOS 2 and 3 are a 100% compatible rebuild of the RHEL 2 and 3 versions, in full compliance with RedHat's redistribution requirements. CentOS is for people who need an enterprise class OS stability without the cost of certification and support.

This should answer your question.

Link I found info. on is below.
http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.ph p?id=2

Why not use 4.0? It's a month old already!

From http://www.centos.org: Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor's Legal Department Targets www.centos.org Website Content

Read the full release

From http://www.centos.org: Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor's Legal Department Targets www.centos.org Website Content

Read the full release

If you check the mailing lists and the IRC channel, you will notice that there are several guys with lotsa servers, as they use CentOS in ISPs, universities and hosting companies.

There even is commercial support available for CentOS.

Not bad, huh?

Please see it yourself at http://www.centos.org/

Peace

>Checking RHN and contacting Redhat proved that we could not get the older kernel version ANYWHERE. We basically ran on the new version after manually extracting the IBM rpm file and installing it.

I understood this the first time around - I meant to say with both CentOS and RHEL the solution is the same (as they are binary compatible).
It's quite possible that it indeed was impossible to download the older kernel (although I think you can get older RPMs if you specify the version) - that's yet another reason for using CentOS (you can download all RPMs at any time from any of the mirrors around the world).

With RHN I usually suggest to use the "download RPMs" switch, then their up2date not only updates the machine but also gets those RPMs on the local HDD so that they can burn them on CD-ROMs and/or share with the whole company via NFS/Samba.
You can also get the RPM via the Web (http://rhn.redhat.com/help/faq/using_rhn.pxt#63) and you can get SRPMS of the kernel package and rebuild RPM as well.
You can use CentOS kernel RPM to upgrade your Red Hat kernel (that'd make it unsupported by Red Hat, though).
And finally, you can install 2-3 CentOS RPMs (yum, centos-release, etc.) to perform online conversion of a RHEL box to CentOS box (some consider it waste of money if the system is still under a valid maintenance contract, though - but after that it's a different story :-)). One thing about this is that some RPMs won't install if they look for redhat-release info which can be fixed with vi editor :-), see CentOS docs or forums for details

You can see all CentOS RPMs at
http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.ph p?id=13
(the current RHEL 3.0 Update 4 corresponds to CentOS 3.4)

I would really consider CentOS if you prefer using operating systems that are maintained by a team of developers. WBEL seems to be maintained by mainly one individual who works for a US library and he has made it clear that he does not want to relinquish control of the project to others. At least with CentOS you know if one team member decides that they don't have enough time for the project then someone else can pick up the slack.

as can be seen in the CentOS FAQ : http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faq id=21

I went to the WBEL website, got re-directed to Whiteboxlinux.net and this is what I saw:
I've been actively involved in the CentOS community for the past several months. As most of you know I've become disinterested in WBEL. CentOS is nearly the same as WBEL with a few minor exceptions: updates occur in a timely fashion (usually 24 hours), the developers are accessible (even if via IRC), and there is an active community (again in IRC atm).
CentOS has launched a new dedicated site at http://www.centos.org
I have prepared a migration page for moving from wbel to CentOS. http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faq id=19

I am confused now. Who's who?

I went to the WBEL website, got re-directed to Whiteboxlinux.net and this is what I saw:
I've been actively involved in the CentOS community for the past several months. As most of you know I've become disinterested in WBEL. CentOS is nearly the same as WBEL with a few minor exceptions: updates occur in a timely fashion (usually 24 hours), the developers are accessible (even if via IRC), and there is an active community (again in IRC atm).
CentOS has launched a new dedicated site at http://www.centos.org
I have prepared a migration page for moving from wbel to CentOS. http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faq id=19

I am confused now. Who's who?

In fact, this very article announced whitebox finnaly got RHEL4 rebuilt, yet the CentOS team had it finished over a month ago, and I'll be putting my first live instance of it in production on monday.

There are also other flavors available...
CentOS at http://www.centos.org/ and probably TaoLinux at http://www.taolinux.org/ will also follow suit with a new release.

One interesting software release that takes advantage of North-American Linux Enterprise distribution, is Asterisk@home, which comes with a recent CentOS 3.4 build. Spin your own VoIP infrastrucutre from http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/

CentOS also fills this niche, and I think has a stronger community base behind it. It's been a while since I've done a full comparison though.