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Red Hat EL 4.0 Released
diegocgteleline.es writes "As it has been noticed by some news sites, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 has been released. RedHat's web site doesn't seem to have any reference, but with Red Hat being probably the most used distro in the enterprise and featuring for first time a 2.6 kernel, this is a major milestone for linux in the server arena. There're already some reviews."
I hate to disappoint you, but Linux 2.6 used in RedHat 4 enterprise distributions hardly makes it a major milestone in the Linux server arena. Enterprise Linux distributions with Linux 2.6 kernel is not exactly a ground breaking thing. SUSE LINUX Enterprise 9 featuring Linux 2.6 was released many months ago. Also the 2.4 kernel used in the 3 series of RedHat enterprise distributions isn't quite vanilla 2.4. It contains already many, many features backported from Linux 2.6.
1) Fedora-like desktop. Of particular note: memory keys are auto-mounted thanks to dbus/HAL support and udev
2) Ability to use selinux MAC and auditing
3) New versions of OO, gimp, gtk, moz out of thje box...
4) Aaaand... there's not much else that stands out. Most stuff that works on 3 will work on 4 and vice versa, maybe requiring a SRPM re-build. It looks pretty much the same, still bluecurve with some tweaks. Not that it doesn't look good.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
*looks down*
.spec file is supposed to look, and payin' through the nose for it, my business is already one step ahead a your'in.
*smiles*
*shakes head*
Ol' Red Hat. Heh. Didn't know people were still usin' it.
*low whistle*
I remember that one time my RPM database got wedged in the middle of a critical glibc upgrade. Let me tell you, them admins didn't like being paged at 4 in the AM. But that's how it was with ol' Red Hat.
And that time I tried to install a customized version of PHP. I just wanted to change one little line in the config for a client. But I had to hunt down and install 12 different devel RPMs first. I didn't want no ODBC, but I had to compile it anyway. Then when I was done, it turned out I downloaded some with security holes. Why couldn't they just put all latest RPMs in a single directory so I could download them easy? That's how it was, with ol' Red Hat.
*looks whistfully into the distance*
*Yup, ol Red Hat. Wonder how she's doin' now. But don't get me wrong, it's over between us. We had some fun. But when her ass started gettin' big and she refused to go on a diet, and she still wore those ol' 1970's style hats when she new it looked stupid, well, that's when it was time to move on. I got a new love now. She does whatever I want and doesn't fight back. But that don't mean she ain't strong. Nooo sir. She just wants the same things I like. Stability. Ease of use. Flexibility. Ain't never seen a distro bend like she can. Whew!
What's that? No I ain't tellin' her name. I figgur, long as you're over there with Red Hat running PostgreSQL 5.0, kernel 2.2, and whatever else, trying to figure out how the heck a
Well, nice talkin' with you son. I best be movin' along. This ol' back a' mine don't take well to settin' still.
From the article:
I guess they aren't comparing release cycles with Debian . . . maybe Longhorn?
All joking aside, I think RHEL isn't so much competing with other Linux distro's as with Windows. RedHat is trying to offer a choice to companies that are considering the jump away from MS: AS and ES for server machines and WS for workstations, solid support. I haven't used RH in a while, but I hear RPM hell isn't the "killer" app it used to be. Sounds like it's good competition for Windows.
Don't save Windows XP! http://www.petitiononline.com/jjw1xp/petition.html
To the average linux user: not very.
To non computer geeks, who only hear about linux through mass media: almost as relevant as back in the day.
Don't save Windows XP! http://www.petitiononline.com/jjw1xp/petition.html
With much (most?) commercial database, email, etc. server software supported only on RHEL in the past, it's the familiar comortable choice for businesses that have already jumped. Remember the "E" in RHEL. More often, recently, I see Suse officially supported, but that's often a harder sell to the bosses. They've heard of Red Hat by now. How do you pronounce that Suse thing? ;-)
Witty signature omitted for brevity.
As for making the jump from EL3 to EL4, well the main reasons IMHO are to dump all the backported patches made since EL3's inception first, going with packages a little less off-the-beaten-track, and then a few updates of things that help the job for frustrated admins. Little things like installing on logical volumes at the outset (long overdue!) and the nature of LVM 2, which allows taking multiple read-writable snapshots of any logical volume, and if lvcreate's usage is to believed, at some point we will be able to take snapshots of snapshots.
By far RedHat's biggest failing IMO is the lack of support for ReiserFS - JFS and XFS would be nice for others, but the former is all I really care for. I like having a filesystem that genuinely allows for atomic disk transactions without any noticeable performance hit. But as has already been stated, RedHat aren't interested in supporting it. It's a real shame, but something we have to live with for now.
- Do you have 5+ years of sysadmin experience?
- Do you have 100+ users?
- Do you have 10+ machines?
- Do you have to support enterprise applications?
Seriously, if you can't answer "yes" to all four questions, perhaps you should just keep your opinions to yourselves. The other distros are great for your mommy's basement, but in the enterprise, there are serious support/stability issues to consider.By far RedHat's biggest failing IMO is the lack of support for ReiserFS - JFS and XFS would be nice for others, but the former is all I really care for. I like having a filesystem that genuinely allows for atomic disk transactions without any noticeable performance hit. But as has already been stated, RedHat aren't interested in supporting it. It's a real shame, but something we have to live with for now.
And they're not supporting it for good reason-- its extended attribute implementation is horrifically broken, and so it won't even mount on an SELinux system. IMHO (and a great many people share the same view), the increased security from SELinux is more important than the slight speed gain, especially at the expense of much higher CPU usage.