Red Hat Readies RHEL 5 for March 14 Launch

Rob writes "The wait is almost over. It may have taken two weeks longer than Red Hat would have liked, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the updated version of the company's commercial Linux platform, will be launched along with a bevy of new products and services on March 14. The delivery of RHEL 5, the fourth major commercial server release for Red Hat, will better position its Linux against Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 as well as Windows, Unix, and proprietary platforms. RHEL 5 has been cooking for more than two years and includes changes to the Linux kernel. In addition to the support for the Xen hypervisor, RHEL 5 also has an integrated version of Red Hat Cluster Suite, the company's high availability clustering software, as well as support for iSCSI disk arrays, InfiniBand with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), and the SystemTap kernel probing tool."

Comments

CentOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the recompile begin!

Re:CentOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't pay a Cent for that OS, huh?

Communist!

I keed, I keed.

Re:CentOS

[Anonymous Coward]

CentOS sucks. Use Debian instead.

Why would you want to use Gay Hat or something based on Gay Hat?

Re:CentOS

[nukepuppy]

*burns you up*

Because its based on the most popular open source distro, whether you hate it or not, its called money

*BURN BURN*

The wait is almost over?

[guysmilee]

The wait is almost over? I didn't realize I was waiting ...

Re:The wait is almost over?

[jimstapleton]

given the low rate of comments on this article so far, I'm not sure anyone else was either.

Re:The wait is almost over?

[MartinG]

If you read the text a bit more carefully you will notice they were not specifically talking about you in particular. There exists a set of people who either use or intend to use RHEL. I imagine a subset of these are the ones likely to be waiting.

Re:The wait is almost over?

[sprag]

On the contrary, I've got 4 new servers coming in during the next couple of weeks and we're planning on RHEL5 from the get-go, so at least _someone_ has been waiting :)

Re:The wait is almost over?

[jimstapleton]

I stand corrected.

No, wait...

I sit corrected.

Re:The wait is almost over?

[hondamankev]

98% of all webhosting/VM companies and millions upon millions of corporate users I would declare as > 0 I'm personally anxious for this release. I loved RHEL 4's stability, but it was showing its age. 2 years in linux years is like, 10 dog years, which is like 120 people years.

Re:The wait is almost over?

[CmdrGravy]

from the get-go From the what ? "get-go", what's that supposed to mean, what's a "get-go" ?

Re:The wait is almost over?

[sprag]

The start. I believe it derives from the phrase "get the word 'go'"

Re:The wait is almost over?

[logic hack]

Care to elaborate into a % of the LoC as carried by an African swallow per hogshead?

Re:The wait is almost over?

[ePhil_One]

There exists a set of people who either use or intend to use RHEL. I imagine a subset of these are the ones likely to be waiting.

Actually, I imagine we'll still be waiting after March 14th. Now that RHEL5 is official, we will start waiting for vendor support, Oracle, EMC, IBM, etc. Making it official is just step 1. People who use RHEL don't rush to update.

The bad news is now my RHCE, earned under RH v8, is officially expired :(

"Enterprise Linux"

[EveryNickIsTaken]

At some point, one of these Enterprise editions had better have a Starfleet logo on it.

Re:"Enterprise Linux"

[armanox]

I think we can pull that off. We'll take and start replacing the redhat logos with the starfleet insignia. But, it should wait until the version of RHEL is 1701, so that we can call it the USS Enterprise Edition.

Re:"Enterprise Linux"

[Ed Avis]

Unfortunately due to trademark issues with the Starfleet Foundation they had to change the name and logo to 'Barflotilla'.

Re:"Enterprise Linux"

[Brian Stretch]

They're waiting for Intel to develop the exploding plasma conduit components. They got close with the P4.

Re:"Enterprise Linux"

[Frumious Wombat]

Only if it ships with a phaser set to "dematerialize" in the box. Oh how I longed for one of those when I was a sysadmin, and had to deal with end users. Of course, I would have settled for the much lower-tech, biomaterial-based, Louiseville Slugger, most days.

R Hell

[pzs]

My experience with RHEL was really not that good. We had an RHEL3 box which had a truly ancient version of Python installed - more than 2 years old. You couldn't force an upgrade, because packages could only be installed if fully compatible with that version of RHEL and that version of Python was the latest that was considered fully compatible. You couldn't do a major version upgrade to, say, RHEL4 without reinstalling the system. When I manually changed the version of Python by compiling it myself, it borked the package manager so it wouldn't get security updates anymore. I ended up with an old and a new version installed next to each other, which is fine, but I had to do all the work of getting them to coexist myself.

A similar story with PHP. To update from PHP4 to PHP5 was a good day of compiling and tweaking to make sure I could get it installed alongside a pukka packaged version of PHP4, thereby not upsetting the package system and invalidating our support.

I know their method is to restrict the versions to make it very well understood and easy to support. It just seems a bit pants to pay for a system that has less update capabilities than most of the free linuxes.

Peter

Re:R Hell

[MartinG]

We had an RHEL3 box which had a truly ancient version of Python installed

Do you realise how long ago RHEL3 came out?

You couldn't force an upgrade

I don't think your criticisms should be aimed at RHEL. If you wanted new packages over stability or wanted to be able to force upgrade then you picked the wrong distro. You are not their target audience.

If the stability of fedora is enough for your needs maybe you should look there instead?

Re:R Hell

[pzs]

I should say that I didn't buy or install this box. It was bought for a biological research institution and the guy who made the purchasing decision chose it because it was Dell's recommended choice. RHEL3 may be ancient, but it came on a fairly new machine, bought in early 2006, so they were obviously still selling it.

It's fair enough that they focus on rock solid stability over new packages. However, it's a bit disappointing that my employers were still paying a support contract on this box but the package updates that were part of this contract were more than 3 years old.

I don't think it's too much to expect a little flexibility when you're paying for it.

Peter

Re:R Hell

[Raleel]

I agree with Martin's comments here. RHEL is Enteprise for a reason. It has long term support, it's stable. One might liken it to Debian stable, although it tends to be a bit more cutting edge than that, although not quite as cutting edge as testing, I believe (I could be wrong here. It's not exactly like I have done a one for one comparison of every package, so feel free to correct me).

I've been running Red Hat in an "enterprise" environment for about 8 years now. I've seen it go from an upgrade every 6 months to not needing an upgrade for the life of a box. Taking a look at our satellite server, I see 210 machines still subscribed to the RHEL 3, and even 13 subscribed to 2.1 (itaniums, hey, they still run!). These boxes are stable and secure, and I'm happy with that. They are performing their functions.

No doubt, it's not for everyone. Many people can't afford it, including myself in my personal life (alright, I could, but I really don't feel the need). Fedora is fine for those. Ubuntu is fine for those. Whatever other version you like is fine for those. If you want it to run with minimal upgrades, you stick with something that has support in some fashion for a long long time afterwards, like RHEL, where you can get security fixes for 7 years after release.

Re:R Hell

[fimbulvetr]

I agree with you and Martin. I have run several dozen RHEL2, 3 and 4 boxes in the past. While RHEL isn't my distro of choice, there's not much wrong with it. Debian just does some things slightly better.

If you color in the lines as far as packages go, RHEL is a remarkably stable OS. Coupled with enterprise support that most PHBs will like, it is a fine arsenal in any sysadmin's cache. Step outside of those lines, and you've defeated the purpose of having a distro with package management, and you might as well call it done for. Most 3rd party apps that run on linux require RHEL n, so you dedicate on of these servers for it. If your distorted perception of compartmentalization beckons you to install the latest and greatest python on that, you have a problem with yourself, not your server.

Re:R Hell

[tobiasly]

RHEL is certainly a distro that is aimed at stability rather than the latest features. It is Red Hat's policy that they will not upgrade any package past the minor version that originally shipped with that release. So if it shipped with Python 2.2.3 then it will never go past 2.2.x. They will backport security or stability patches from later releases if necessary.

If that's not the policy you're looking for in a distro, then RHEL is not the distro for you. That said, I have had lots of luck in compiling SRPMs from later RHEL versions or from Fedora when necessary. For example I wanted to upgrade my CentOS 4 box to PHP 5, so I just grabbed the latest php-5.2.x SRPM and was able to compile and install it without much modification (I believe I had to take out a not-yet-supported gcc option and a couple other tweaks).

Going that route IMO is a good mix of stability and being able to upgrade certain packages when necessary, because the SRPMs already include Red Hat specific patches when necessary, but if that method is still too far from the bleeding edge for your tastes then I would agree RHEL is not a good match for you. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with RHEL though.

Re:R Hell

[div_2n]

I guess it depends on what you use it for. RHEL4 was in no way acceptable as an enterprise file server in an Active Directory environment IMO. The reference package in the base install is many revisions behind the most current stable (3.0.24). There are bugs present that makes configuring AD authentication support a very rough ride. Not only that, but the behavior is not one I found reliable.

I am sure version 5 will have much newer packages, but will be woefully outdated in a very short amount of time. With the majority of the packages used in RHEL, this isn't an issue. But with a project such as Samba, they are overcoming two obstacles which makes older packages very quickly undesirable--1) Reverse engineering Microsoft's SMB implementation and 2) Chasing a moving target due to Microsoft updates.

With Samba 4 on the horizon and Vista patches being developed now, I can't help but feel that RHEL 5 as a Samba platform isn't going to be exceptionally viable very soon after being released. Do not underestimate the importance of a Linux distro being the best as an AD integrated file server and "soon" (with Samba 4) an Windows AD server replacement. I wager that for many enterprise customers, this is going to be a very big deal over the next two or three years.

Re:R Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

One might liken it to Debian stable

Ha! Except that when your scsi card is up and down like a bride's
nightie due to a buggy scsi driver shipped with the OS, you can
update the kernel to fix it without breaking all GUI apps due the
RH's idiotic thread library not being in a stock kernel.

Bitter, yes. A RHEL4 departmental server ruined my summer last
year, wouldn't you be?

Re:R Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

You couldn't force an upgrade, because packages could only be installed if fully compatible with that version of RHEL and that version of Python was the latest that was considered fully compatible.

That's not a bug. It's a feature.

Large businesses want to use software that is stable and supported by the vendor. So it is often better to use software that is a year or two old and is upgraded only when bugfixes are needed, rather than making major, compatibility-breaking upgrades every few weeks.

Re:R Hell

[tobiasly]

However, it's a bit disappointing that my employers were still paying a support contract on this box but the package updates that were part of this contract were more than 3 years old.

The point is that, even though the Python package may be 3 years old, if it's still under support, and tomorrow they found a security bug in that years-old version, you would still get a security patch for it.

I don't think it's too much to expect a little flexibility when you're paying for it.

That's the thing.. you're not paying for a little flexibility. You're paying for stability and maintenance. It may seem backwards to you but that's the exact sorta thing that most "enterprise" customers want. If they offered the sort of flexibility you're looking for, that would mean supporting multiple different versions of different packages within a single distro.

The reason they can offer such long-term support is that every user of every package in that distro is running the exact same version. It would simply not be economically possible for them to offer 7 years of support on a product if they allowed people to run whatever version they wanted, even as an option.

Re:R Hell

[Jokkey]

It should be noted that there are third-party projects to add the flexibility and newer versions you want, like CentOS Plus (includes PHP 5, Postgres 8, MySQL 5, and others) and PyVault (Python 2.4).

Re:R Hell

[Billly Gates]

Welcome to RPM hell.

Which is why I switched to Ubuntu and FreeBSD long ago from redhat. The conspiracist in me thinks rpm was invented as a way to keep you on the upgrade trendmill. I spent lots of money in the past upgrading linux distros before I had high speed internet access and could apt-get or use the ports. RPM is truly terrible and yum does not solve anything other than to download some other packages that might be required with it. Upgrading is still a nightmare.

I guess commercial software vendors like Oracle love people all running the same version of everything because its easier to support and develop but its not friendly for users.

Re:R Hell

[walt-sjc]

I don't think your criticisms should be aimed at RHEL. If you wanted new packages over stability or wanted to be able to force upgrade then you picked the wrong distro. You are not their target audience.

I think it depends on the KIND of stability you are looking for... There is stability in the fact that nothing changes, and there is stability in terms of operational reliability.

The problem with the former, is that modern third party software tends to be incompatible with ancient versions of software that are bundled with RHEL 4 for example. If you want to run MediaWiki, you need PHP5. There is no PHP5 for RHEL from RedHat. There is nothing inherently instable about PHP5 - RHEL5 supports it.

CentOS deals with this with a "Plus" repository, which allows you to install more modern versions of software.

So who is the target audience? People that only run Oracle or a Samba server? Or people that want to run modern web applications? The GP has a VERY valid point, and RH has already lost some sales due to their inability to keep the OS "fresh" while still being stable.

Remember, a Linux distribution is not like Windows. It has a LOT more software. In the windows world, you typically use third party software in cases where the functionality is "standard" in Linux. Good examples are PHP and MySQL. It's trivial to upgrade PHP and MySQL on Windows, but quite hard on RHEL.

I need my base framework stable, but not outdated.

That said, when I need to do a major distro upgrade, I do it by installing on a new machine, and move applications / data over. That way I can test it well before cutover. I really don't like in-place upgrades.

Re:R Hell

[jabuzz]

Curious do you wish to explain then how RHEL4 release 4 box would be running Firefox 1.5 if that really is the policy because at release 3 it was 1.0.7?

Re:R Hell

[Wdomburg]

I should say that I didn't buy or install this box. It was bought for a biological research institution and the guy who made the purchasing decision chose it because it was Dell's recommended choice. RHEL3 may be ancient, but it came on a fairly new machine, bought in early 2006, so they were obviously still selling it.

That seems a bit off. By early 2006 any current Dell would have been certified for RHEL4 (which itself was released early 2005). As a aside, license for RHEL are valid for any currently supported version, so even if it came imaged with RHEL3 you had right to install RHEL4.

It's fair enough that they focus on rock solid stability over new packages. However, it's a bit disappointing that my employers were still paying a support contract on this box but the package updates that were part of this contract were more than 3 years old.

The updates are not three years old. There was a new update published this morning. The base versions are old, but that's a feature, not a bug. When you're running production systems you want a stable platform with a reasonable deployment cycle, which is where RHEL excels.

I don't think it's too much to expect a little flexibility when you're paying for it.

When you pay for one of the enterprise platforms you're paying for stability not flexibility. It's actually more work for them to backport fixes to older versions than to blindly package newer ones, but new versions mean new bugs and incompatible changes. Some of us pay good money to avoid it, and RPM is flexible and easy enough for the few cases we actually need a newer version than what Red Hat ships stock.

Re:R Hell

[stry_cat]

RedHat isn't to blame for your problems.

We had similar problems. However all you have to do is when you install the newer version of python, do make altinstall instead of a make install. When you need the newer version, you just do /usr/bin/python2.4 when you start your app. Python takes care if it all. Really simple.

As for your php problem. Remove all of the php rpms and install from source. It does not invalidate your support (at least it hasn't invalidated ours). You can get multiple version of php running on the same server. You can do it with mulitple apache installs or through http://groups.google.com/group/alt.php/browse_frm/ thread/e19e4d7ab309ed3b/2e18b77fa8c54b83?lnk=st&q= install+multiple+versions+of+php&rnum=13&hl=en#2e1 8b77fa8c54b83">playing with the apache handlers.

I've found RHEL to be by far the easiest distro that just works out of the box. It also pretty easily can be customized without having support issues. The worst that might happen are the above two issues. Everything else is even more simple. I didn't think Linux would ever be this easy! Now if they could just get the Fedora Crap project on track and not behaving like alpha and beta software, I'd be happy (until they do I'll use CentOS at home).

(Why am I seeing two posts when I preview??)

Re:R Hell

[d3xt3r]

If you run an enterprise application, stability is critical in terms of both operational reliability and package versions. While I agree with you that some of the higher level applications that could be kept more "fresh", Enterprise Linux targets an audience that tends to run mission critical applications on their operating systems. These companies deal with a number of third party ISVs who certify their products on Red Hat Linux. If software package versions are changing constantly, ISVs will refuse to certify said changes due to the cost of doing so.

This was one of the problems with Red Hat's pre-Enterprise Linux audiences. ISVs saw Linux as a moving target. I think Red Hat does a good job of freshening what they can with their point releases.

Simply put, if you need bleeding edge software, you'll need to find it from Fedora or a third party repository. There are a number of repositories out there, AT-RPMs, Dag, RPM Forge, etc. that package applications for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. However, for Linux to be enterprise-ready, core stability (again in terms of versioning and reliability are a must.

Re:R Hell

[jabuzz]

Debian seem to manage though, stable comes with Firefox 1.0.4 It seems like a lame excuse by RedHat if you ask me.

Re:R Hell

[Deagol]

We had an RHEL3 box which had a truly ancient version of Python installed - more than 2 years old.

While no fan of Redhat (anymore), this is just a lame complaint.

You know, Solaris and it's commercial brethren didn't always include the open source tools we've come to expect these days.

Before AIX, Sun, IRIX, etc. all had open source repositories with binaries rolled into the native package format (these days, often provided by the vendor itself!), we admins got along just fine either compiling most source packages with the stock (or vedor optional) compilers. Heck, if you preferred GCC, it was fairly simple (albeit a day's work) to bootstrap a complete GNU build environment (gcc, gnu-utils, glibc, make, autoconf, automake, etc.) using the stock compilers, and then springboard from there.

Given the supported development environment *included* with RH anymore, anyone who complains about the lack of a specific version of an open source package needs his admin credentials revoked. And don't give me the "support" excuse. If the shop is *that* mission critical, it will buy support for the hardware, the OS on that hardware, and any 3rd party apps running on that OS. Otherwise, suck it up and "configure && make && make install".

Re:R Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you call Red Hat's support? That's the sort of thing you pay them to fix (the SCSI card bug, not the hand-upgraded kernel that is).

Richard.

Re:R Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI,

Dealing with source, so that compiles do not effect what is installed.

configure --prefix=/usr/local or wherever you would like the install. This way you can have custom compiles of different software.

Re:R Hell

[ahodgson]

I guess it depends on what you use it for. RHEL4 was in no way acceptable as an enterprise file server in an Active Directory environment IM

The whole point of RHEL is that packages don't change. You can always package your own Samba, though, and update over the core packages. Samba's actually pretty easy to do this with, you can probably just grab a Fedora dev SRPM and recompile it ... a lot easier than a core scripting language. In fact, most applications are easy to package newer versions for and run on top of a stable RHEL or CentOS base. CentOS even provides a plus repo with MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP and some other things that are more current than base, if that's what you need.

Re:R Hell

[ahodgson]

If you need to update core packages that often, you should probably run Fedora.

Re:R Hell

[Neutrino Linguino]

Usually, you can get away with doing a build from source with some variation of --prefix=/usr/local/pkg, so as to not interfere with the native pkg.

That's how I ran my newer custom builds of Apache, PHP, MySQL, and OpenSSL under RH7 and RHEL3. It can get a bit tricky with OpenSSL, due to the runtime linker and some libs, but generally thats what /usr/local/ is there for [or at least that's what I have used it for].

I have not looked into building Python, but as long as you leave the env alone, and specify the path to python or use the correct shebang line, it probably would work out.

http://www.devside.net/guides/linux

[Though these days, I just leave all that alone and use whatever comes with RH]

Re:R Hell

[ahodgson]

Upgrading an RPM distro with yum is exactly the same as upgrading Ubuntu. Well, unless you deliberately shoot yourself in the foot by installing RPM's from a different distro.

Re:R Hell

[Ryan Amos]

If you need php5, compile it. It's not that hard. Hell, you can compile and install an entire LAMP stack from source in under an hour in a non-root home directory as long as you know which modules you need. The LAMP stack changes a lot more than the base OS does, so IMO it's better to compile it yourself no matter which distro you use.

Re:R Hell

[cortana]

Judging by http://idssi.enyo.de/tracker/status/release/stable , I would say that Debian is handling this the same that most other distributors have, i.e., lagging badly. mozilla.com have to take a lot of the blame for this.

Re:R Hell

[div_2n]

>>> You can always package your own Samba

And lose support for Samba on that system. Then you must ask--what are you paying for?

Re:R Hell

[walt-sjc]

Well, for production that is indeed what I have to do. I have to have the entire web stack compiled with all the special features we use, and some very specific versions of libraries. Everything goes in /usr/local. It's a challenge, because there are patches released all the time for one module or another, which frequently requires rebuilding a large chunk of modules due to dependencies.

That said, people also choose RHEL so they don't HAVE to maintain everything by hand. With CentosPuls containing PHP5, you don't have to. If you swap out PHP with a hand-compiled version and have an apache issue, will RH still support you??? If not, then the utility / value of RH support contracts is down about NIL.

Re:R Hell

[Builder]

Oh how I wish I hadn't used all my mod points yesterday :(

Re:R Hell

[NuShrike]

Funny enough, *BSD and pretty much anything that supports pkgsrc, Debian, Ubuntu, Linspire, Freespire all happen to support multiple different versions of different packages within a single "distro". Many support it for FREE.

Some even allow multiple version installs at the same time as is intended by the software program (multiple gccs, pythons, etc) instead of some single "blessed"/core system version.

Why do packages have to be vendor locked to the OS release? We don't put up with it with Microsoft's stuff, but it's okay because it's Red Hat?

Re:R Hell

[NuShrike]

Maybe there'll be a more *BSD-like Linux distro someday that doesn't make the core OS dependent on so many external user level packages, or at least allow core packages to coexist with user-installed packages, such as 2 versions of PHP, or stuff like python as python's native install already supports.

Some reason, /usr/local | /opt seems very forgotten.

Re:R Hell

[ahodgson]

If Samba isn't doing what you need it to do, what does it matter if it is supported?

CentOS 5

[Nighttime]

By looking at the release dates of CentOS 4.x and comparing them to the release dates of RHEL 4.x, it looks like we can expect to see CentOS 5 released on 28th March 2007.

The two weeks lead time would appear to be borne out by this CentOS FAQ entry.

Re:CentOS 5

[fimbulvetr]

This is far from offtopic. Centos is a complete build of RHEL5 from redhat's released sources, with RH's branding removed. The updates, etc, are then provided for free by the CentOS community. Centos is a great OS for people not needing RH's support, but needing RH's OS.

This is completely on topic, and I, like (probably) many other people, immediately wondered when CentOS's release would be after seeing this announcement.

Re:CentOS 5

[Anonymous Coward]

Our server at work came with RedHat but now Runs CentOS (I think our RedHat subscription still has a year or so left), primarily because CentOS has all the goodness of RedHat without RedHat's 'prove your not a crook' and 'is your subscriuption up to date' features.

Re:CentOS 5

[Anonymous Coward]

centos rocks

Thanks god there are people paying for rhel if they can afford it though.

Re:CentOS 5

[walt-sjc]

Centos has another HUGE advantage over the base RHEL - the CentosPlus repository. With Plus, you can grab php5 without needing to go out and grab srpms from fedora and make all sorts of manual changes to make it work, and building / maintaining your own packages.

RHEL could gain a LOT more converts and increase value with their own version of Plus. Plus gives you the best of both worlds.

Re:CentOS 5

[nukepuppy]

I think redhat's plus repo is called fedora!

Re:CentOS 5

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat is doing this with EPEL ... http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ

Re:CentOS 5

[perbu]

Can't you use CentoPlus with RHEL? I though Centos was supposed to be binary compatible with RHEL.

Re:CentOS 5

[ahodgson]

It would likely break your support contract, which is really the whole reason you run RHEL, isn't it?

Technically the packages should work fine, though.

crash dump

[br00tus]

One thing Solaris does well which Linux is still struggling with is crash dumps and crash dump analysis. I know it is easier with Solaris due to the integration between the OS and the hardware, as opposed to say Red Hat and a variety of supported vendors, but is definitely a nice thing to have. Especially if a system crashes and you bring it back up without a good analysis of what went wrong - you might have a $10000 system for the business unit (with everything included) yet if you don't know why it crashed, you're always nervous about the box. The Linux core team talks about having to get to the enterprise level, and Linux still has a way to go in terms of this, to get to the level of Sun and vendors like that in this respect.

Re:crash dump

[Raleel]

I do not know if it will fit your requirements, but redhat does have solid crash dump support. While it's a little old, http://www.redhat.com/support/wpapers/redhat/netdu mp/ describes it, including it's ability to do crash dumps over the net. A nice feature that comes with the enterprise level versions.

Re:crash dump

[Anonymous Coward]

If by still struggling you mean by, "only being available in every Red Hat (Enterprise) Linux since Red Hat 7.2", perhaps.

There is both netdump (dump to a remote host, via ssh), diskdump (dump to a partition) and the new to be in RHEL5 kdump (which does all kinds of neat things).

and re: debuging tools:

Its not for kids, but check out andersons paper on debugging vmcore files.
http://people.redhat.com/anderson/crash_whitepaper /index.html#toc

I've traced down a few causes of bugs with this, One might argue it might not be as point and clicky as other crash debuggers, but I'd rather have a skilled coder fixing bugs than someone who feels uncomfortable at the commandline.

Re:crash dump

[f0d0]

I'd rather have a system that doesn't crash than fancy crashdumps and crash dump analysis

Re:crash dump

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've played with the Betas you would have recognized that there is a new tech, Kdump and Xendump available. Kdump replaces netdump and diskdump functionality. Xendump is for pulling core-dump files from VMs, crashed or running.

Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[cyberkahn]

I use to be a long time Red Hat user. I used Red Hat, since 4.2 up until version 9. When they went the Fedora route, I switched to Ubuntu and have never looked back since. Ubuntu is how Red Hat use to be before they got greedy. I like Ubuntu much better than Red Hat e.g. package management etc.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[Sherloqq]

Like the RHEL3 poster, you're not the target audience for RHEL.
RHEL is about the server. Fedora, Ubuntu and other are about the desktop.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[weeble]

You might want to consider who paid for writing the kernel.

How much effort was put in to fixing bugs by people paid for by Red Hat.

Software developed by Red Hat includes projects such as Network Manager, Totem etc.

This all costs money and Red Hat funds a lot of development. I do not see Ubuntu on the following list:
Top (kernel) lines changed by employer
(Unknown) 740990 29.5%
Red Hat 361539 14.4%
(None) 239888 9.6%
IBM 200473 8.0%
QLogic 91834 3.7%
Novell 91594 3.6%
Intel 78041 3.1%
MIPS Technologies 58857 2.3%
Nokia 39676 1.6%
SANPeople 36038 1.4%

http://lwn.net/Articles/222773/

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

RHEL and ubuntu cater to two completely different kinds of computing.

Ubuntu cares more about pretty widgets for new linux users than "Enterprise" features.

By "Enterprise" I mean things like...

Kerberos/LDAP integration: If you don't know, this is what will enable SSO capabilities. (aka, what windows did with AD over 7 years ago.) Ubuntu has had a bug in nss_ldap that showed up in Edgy that causes the system to delay booting by a few minutes because it "cannot contact the LDAP server".(bug Bug 51315). Dapper was supposed to be the first Enterprise edition. It worked fine in that release. It has been broken in Edgy, and will remain broken in Feisty as well because its part of "Universe" and not in the main branch. Something like this should not be broken for over a year solid spanning two releases.

Consistency and uniformity: UID and GID used for system accounts (proxy, cups, bin, sys, etc) should not change between releases breezy -> dapper). Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot.

Commercial software validation/ certification: Oracle support on Ubuntu == Lies.

Documentation: http://www.redhat.com/docs/ vs http://www.ubuntu.com/support/documentation : You decide.
A WIKI??

Support: Redhat will fly somebody out at 3am vs canonicals... uhm.... *reads their webpage*... *scratches head*....

RHEL runs machines that are important.
Ubuntu runs yours.

-s

/ never posts on slashdot... // Posting as AC because I'm too busy to recover my login.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been a Linux hobbiest for a long time, and I started on RH, and continue to use RH and CentOS. I would like to know why so many people are crazy over Ubuntu and despise RH or Fedora? Politics aside, what specifically are the technical reasons that ubuntu and/or others are considered so "superior" to RH/Fedora?

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[cyberkahn]

"RHEL is about the server. Fedora, Ubuntu and other are about the desktop."
Not true. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is great for the server.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[Sherloqq]

I have been a Linux hobbyist for a while as well, though I started out with Slackware. By now I only use CentOS -- I'm used to RH standards by now and don't feel the need to "change" or "experiment" with other stuff, even if that means giving up some of the eye candy that being cutting-edge offers. I think I'm getting old...

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[hondamankev]

One day when I figure out how to +5 someone, ill +5 posts such as this.

Good point.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[zitch]

I've started out using Slackware, then moved on to Debian. My use of Ubuntu really stems from my knowledge of how Debian works.

That said, I find that there are no technical reasons that Ubuntu is in any way "superior" to RH/Fedora. It's simply just my preference. Don't let the fanboys fool you.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[walt-sjc]

Ah here we go. Let's put it this way... If RedHat went out of business tomorrow, those same kernel developers would just go to another company, and in all likely hood will still be kernel developers. Looking at that list, IBM which doesn't even have a distro, is not that far behind. More telling is the "Unknown" which is twice RedHat.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud RedHat for all the work they are doing, but I have no illusions that they are the only company willing and able to do that work. Furthermore, they have designed their product line and pricing of it in a way that just doesn't work for a huge segment of the market. Why should I use a product that fails to meet my requirements of having "reasonably" fresh software, and pricing that offers reasonable discounts on large numbers of copies? CentOS, via their Plus repository gives me the best of both worlds. Stability and consistency where I need it, fresh software when I need it, at a price point that can't be beat. RH can learn from Centos.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

You say:

Stability and consistency where I need it, fresh software when I need it, at a price point that can't be beat. RH can learn from Centos.

I say:

Dude, you pay for Red Hat Support, engineering, effort to go through certification and testing, you don't get this with CentOS, as a previous poster said.. "You are not in the market".

Since, CentOS mirrors the package releases of RHEL, I cant say packages are 'fresh', but whatever.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[Viol8]

>Kerberos/LDAP integration: If you don't know, this is what will enable SSO capabilities. (aka, what windows did with AD over 7 years ago.)

I think you need to learn your IT history a bit better. Unix has had single sign on capability since NIS (formerly Yellow Pages) was created back in the 80s (I believe version 2 was 1985) and linux has had it since pretty early on in its history. As usual Microsoft were last out of the stalls but made a big song and dance about it and pretended they'd re-invented the wheel yet again.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[kripkenstein]

That's a list for the Linux kernel, and yes, Ubuntu (Canonical) don't appear there. But Ubuntu do provide support for several non-kernel FOSS projects. For example, Upstart, Nouveau, GNOME (they provided a Subversion server for the recent GNOME migration from CVS), and probably others I forgot or haven't heard of.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[walt-sjc]

Dude: work on your reading comprehension.

CentOS, via their Plus repository

Redhat doesn't HAVE a "Plus" repository, which is where CentOS puts recent versions of software for those that require it.

Since I can't get that for ANY price from RH, they actually have LESS value to me.

Here is a real world scenario. I have several racks full of blade servers. The hardware is identical. The configuration is identical. The software loaded is identical. These machines are all clones of each other. If I have a problem with the OS, it will affect all of them, and the fix will fix all of them. If cost of support of one machine is X, and I have N machines, the support cost and effort is not N*X, it's more like 2X. RH wants to charge me N*($Retail-20%) for "support." That's just not reasonable. RHEL is not Windows, and the Windows pricing model doesn't work for it.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[jargoone]

The reasons aren't technical. People despise Red Hat because they "sold out" and make money. Pure and simple. People will eventually despise Ubuntu if LTS becomes the success that RHEL has.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[MostAwesomeDude]

I've used Red Hat back when it had to be installed from floppy, and have an FC6 box for dev work on my desk today. (Don't get me too wrong. My fileserver's Gentoo, and the personal laptop I'm on right now is Debian Etch.)

When you say that Red Hat is "greedy," do you mean that they are wrong for selling Linux? After all, people who buy Red Hat's Linux get support, oodles of manuals (good luck getting that brand-new SATA2 RAID card to work in Ubuntu without some arcane incantation halfway through your init (WTF is up with Ubuntu's init anyway? Sure, I appreciate that it's clean and nice-looking, but why is it so damn slow? Even Knoppix CDs boot faster on my friend's dev box than his Ubuntu installation does...)), and they also get a bit of a warranty, which is not something that comes with any flavor of free Linux.

I like Ubuntu much better than Red Hat e.g. package management etc. Yeah, I can't argue with that. Even today, APT still kicks yum out of the water when it comes to being non-buggy and working right. Of course, Ubuntu isn't exactly the best example; they clutter up their repos with an astounding amount of virtual packages.

Also, Ubuntu is nothing like Red Hat in their philosophy. Red Hat sells Linux in order to make a profit. Thus, they work on making their Linux fast, clean, and fully documented, in order to maximize sales. Ubuntu makes Linux in order to promote Linux's desktop share. Thus, they make their distro complete, with out-of-the-box support for proprietary drivers and with oodles of applications. Neither side is perfect: Red Hat's distro is not free if you want the enterprise support, and Ubuntu's distro is bloated and poorly designed for expert users.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[nukepuppy]

I dont know , this Unknown guy has some skills

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[teg]

NIS is not SSO - NIS is a directory service. If you want SSO, you need to combine it with kerberos.

Re:Red Hat doesn't matter anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory, maybe. Most people will prefer to wait until they actually have a track record of keeping up those promises. Ask me again in 2011, and we'll see if it's still supported.

Redhat Dominates enterprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Like it or not, Redhat dominates the enterprise corporate and government markets for Linux. RHEL5 is highly anticipated and looked forward to, it has many nice features listed. However, until it is released, any discussion about it is really rhetoric.

As for being dominant, there is a thing in any industry that if you are the first, its very hard to lose that position. Redhat was first to the commercial sector. Other distributions qualities may rock, but Redhat was still first, and its position in the market will continue to reflect that.

Re:Redhat Dominates enterprise

[crush]

Here here. I am eagerly awaiting RHEL5, am currently having fun with Fedora Core7 Test2 and can't see what the point of this product announcement is on Slashdot. I hate posts like this. It's just marketing crap. Any sysadmin that's planning on upgrade is already aware of the issue. Give us something with some more meat.

Re:Redhat Dominates enterprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree with your comments mostly, however you had one error. Not that it matters so much, but SuSE was actually the first commercial distro...they were out about a year or so before RH...

Re:Redhat Dominates enterprise

[bryguy5]

Except for us part time sysadmin's that are wanting for php5 support on a stable server os and would rather just browse through slashdot rather than hitting a dozen other vendor sites for info.

Re:Redhat Dominates enterprise

[crush]

The CentOSPlus repository has rpms for PHP5 since at least mid-2006. Still I take your point.

free edition of rhel

[Anonymous Coward]

and as always after a couple of weeks there is the free CentOS (http://www.centos.org) available which uses the _same_ code (they rebuild the SRPMS).

Where are the package listings?

[dmeranda]

Is there a listing of the included RPM packages and versions of each? This is something that I find extremely useful, especially when deciding whether I want to upgrade to or use a particular release. Red Hat has historically made this information very hard to obtain, even with their Fedora line. Why is it so hard to just post a listing?

Re:Where are the package listings?

[Wdomburg]

Hard to obtain how exactly? Go to ftp.redhat.com, look at a directory listing. RHEL5 isn't up yet, because it's not released, but there have been publicly available beta ISOs for months, so approximate versions are widely known. For example, distro watch has a table listing versions of the major packages.

Re:Where are the package listings?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, your web site blinded me.

I wouldn't normally comment, but you hailed it as an example of "clean design" and hope that it will "spur" other "web designers" into constructing similar monstrosities.

Or maybe you are color blind?

Can Etch be far behind?!??!???

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling December '06: We want our new Debian stable!

When is Ubuntu Going to Compete with RedHat?

[ubuwalker31]

I am curious why Ubuntu is not competing more with Red Hat in the Server Space?

Re:When is Ubuntu Going to Compete with RedHat?

[jabuzz]

Because Ubuntu does not have a long track record of providing five years of product support. Once you deploy a server in a production enviroment doing OS upgrades is not something to be done lightly, and if it ain't broke I am not about to try fixing it. Knowing I can depend on RedHat to keep my servers secure to the point I will be binning the hardware first is very important.

Re:When is Ubuntu Going to Compete with RedHat?

[hondamankev]

3 words:

Developers
Develop...

wait, wrong thread.

3 words:

Support.
Support.
Support.

Re:When is Ubuntu Going to Compete with RedHat?

[gormanly]

Yep. And s/five/seven =)

Re:When is Ubuntu Going to Compete with RedHat?

[pembo13]

When they start spending money on Linux (see past article on biggest cooperate ccontributors to the kernel)

Re:When is Ubuntu Going to Compete with RedHat?

[shankarunni]

It's not like they don't have ambitions in this regard, though. They designated a special version of 6.06 as "LTS" (for Long-term support), with a 5-year support promise. I suspect they'll be slower with the LTS releases than the general public release cycle (which is every 6 months), and base the next LTS on some stable version of a top-level series (say 7.0X for X >> 4).

Re:When is Ubuntu Going to Compete with RedHat?

[Miguelito]

Because far too many companies will only buy the distribution that they can get support for.. not from the OS vendor as much as from their ISVs for the software they need to work.

We were also being pushed down the RHEL path several years back (right when RH EOL'd the RH releases that all our major ISVs had just standardized on... thanks guys, same basic timeframe for the Novell/Suse merger). Our talks about pricing to RH basically went "We'd like to talk about bulk pricing." "We're the only 'certified' game in town, no discounts, pay what we say!" That obviously didn't sit well with us. Especially since most of the cost is up-front support payments that might not ever even be used. There was also the problem that, at the time, they considered anything 64bit (including x86_64) as "Enterprise class" hw that could only use their ES version, which was $1798 per machine. That really didn't fly.

We ended up making a deal with Novell to license running and pay for support separately. We then pushed back on our ISVs to support Suse as well as Redhat (which they said absolutely noone else wanted, when we knew for a fact this was a lie, we talked to other customers of theirs as well and they were asking the same thing). Today they almost all support both vendors. Didn't take RH very long to change their tune on pricing either... a little too late for our group however.

Of course now we're trying to enlighten them on LSB so that distribution can be taken completely out of the equation. But they think that would just result in far more problems for them... ignoring that LSB would actually help as they would have to include many libraries outside what LSB calls for with their package, and that alone would probably solve the vast majority of issues we see. They already include quite a few libraries already... so it's not like it would be hard.

The number of crappy scripts that comes from these ISVs that expect to see exactly what they want in /etc/redhat-release or /etc/SuSE-release vs just looking for basic minimums (say by using autoconf) is just scary. Huge pain in the ass too.

Re:When is Ubuntu Going to Compete with RedHat?

[jc42]

I'm curious about this, too. I have a server and workstation running a somewhat oldish RH, and I'm considering upgrading. However, I'm getting to more and more need good UTF-8 support, for a number of multi-language projects. I'm trying to figure out which release does this best. It seems that, given the emphasis on supplying the "rest of the world" with linux, ubuntu might be a better way to go than RH. But I've been having difficulties getting really good information on the topic.

Anyone with useful information on this topic? If I want random files to be in arbitrary languages, and I also want the file names to be in those languages, what distros should I be looking at, and why?

Is there some good reading on this somewhere? If so, I haven't been able to guess the right google keywords to find it.

boring == good

[heinlein]

RHEL (or, for me, CentOS) is boring. It's not meant to run on the latest gamer PCs or laptops. It doesn't include proprietary video drivers. All it does is serve up bits without interruption: databases, web pages, DNS, DHCP, LDAP, files, login shells. Work gets done. Customers get served. Employees get paid. All without any danger/excitement! Boring is a feature, not a bug.

Proprietary Platforms?

[HockeyPuck]

the fourth major commercial server release for Red Hat, will better position its Linux against Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 as well as Windows, Unix, and proprietary platforms. What do they mean by proprietary platforms? Who knew RH was actively going after z/OS, OS/400, VMS, VxWorks, OSX.... what exactly consistutes a proprietary platform? One that only one vendor can create hardware for? Or one that there is only one vendor selling hardware/software/accessories for it?

Re:Proprietary Platforms?

[aktzin]

What do they mean by proprietary platforms? Who knew RH was actively going after z/OS, OS/400, VMS, VxWorks, OSX.... what exactly consistutes a proprietary platform? One that only one vendor can create hardware for? Or one that there is only one vendor selling hardware/software/accessories for it?

I think by "proprietary" they mean mostly Unix systems from vendors like Sun, IBM and HP. But when it comes to IBM this goes both ways because Red Hat (and SuSE) run on most, if not all, IBM boxen:

xSeries - Intel/AMD

pSeries - POWER

iSeries - formerly known as AS400

zSeries - the big iron

Re:Proprietary Platforms?

[nukepuppy]

doesn't the eggandmuffin maker run AS400 ? its quite a "boxen" http://www.eggandmuffintoaster.com/

RH5 Looks good

[LatexBendyMan]

I'm currently testing the RH5 release as we speak. I have to say this has to be one of there strongest releases yet (Network Admins are going to love this). One major difference your all going to notice is the install has changed alot, and the number of packages included in this release (Each package can contain up to 50 sub packages) It probably takes 10 or so minutes just to select all of them. Honestly the GUI hasnt changed much from RH4 or RH3 and I have yet to try out any of the cluster stuff or ISCI, Alot of developer tools in this release! I have to give props to RH on this release!

Building/installing Python RPM is trivial.

[Anonymous Coward]

wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.5/Python-2.5.tg z
rpmbuild -tb Python-2.5.tgz
rpm -i /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/python2.5-2.5-1pydotorg

and you have yourself latest Python installed alongside bundled one, to be accessed as "python2.5"

Re:Building/installing Python RPM is trivial.

[cortana]

How do make all the presently-installed python modules and extensions accessible to the new python?

Missed the Ides of March

[Anonymous Coward]

Missed it by this much: --><--

3/14 = Pi Day!

[antdude]

Pi day! :) I wonder if it will be released at the exact time too?

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RHEL(L)?

[arthas]

I use RHEL4 compatible distro called Scientific Linux CERN 4 (SLC4) on my laptop. I need it to run some CERN software (mainly Geant4 and ROOT). These packages mostly work on other systems as well but they work best on SLC4 because they have been thoroughly tested on this platform. On other (newer) distros expecially new GCC4 compiler causes some annoying problems. I really like many things in this distro: stability (both as in "doesn't crash" and "doesn't change insert-name-of-software-package-here version unexpectedly", upgrades generally don't break anything, graphical installation/administration tools are great, etc. etc. etc... There is only one problem: lack of software packages. There is no good way to install new versions of some graphical apps. This is not exclusively Red Hat problem. It exists on all Linux platforms. The problem is that software developers have "works-for-me" attitude: "If I have the latest distro probably everyone else has it too." So they code apps using the latest versions of libraries. Since I use this software on my laptop (which is my primary computer right now) I need both stability of RHEL4 and preferably new desktop software (because new software offers generally better features and usability).

I'm annoyed by this situation because I can't install new tools when I need/want them. This is very inflexible (imagine that: I'm blaming Linux for inflexibility...) The only solution to this problem seems to be virtualization. RHEL 4.5 update (and probably SLC 4.5 as well) is going to have Xen domU support. Maybe it will be then painless to move, say to Fedora 7 or RHEL5 based SLC5 and run SLC4 using virtualization... One can only hope...

Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Diskdump is what you want, and it works superbly. The only issue that I've found is that it doesn't work on all hard drives. But, having put the support in myself for one driver, it's really not that hard to add.

I've debugged Solaris dumnps (when I was at Sun) and Linux dumps. Honestly, the support in Linux is quite good, and the tools available have allowed me to track down all problems except MCAs on an Itanium box (but that falls outside of the Linux kernel, and is a part of Intel's horrible EFI implementation).

Honestly, to say that Linux is still struggling with this is just plain flat-out wrong. It's either disingenous or you have no idea whatsoever of what you're talking about.

This is why /usr/local exists

[HighOrbit]

When I manually changed the version of Python by compiling it myself, it borked the package manager so it wouldn't get security updates anymore.

If you have some scripts that absolutely got to run with the newer version, then compile your own and put it in /usr/local. That way you don't bork the base system and you can still do what you want in our own little /usr/local sandbox. The only way that would fail is if the newer version is not backwards source-compatible with whatever version of libc RHEL 3 uses, which (while possible) is unlikely. The whole point of /usr/local is that you roll-your-own without screwing with the system managed components in /usr. Whatever you do, *never ever* install something non-standard or that you compiled yourself into /usr/bin or you will almost certainly bork the system. You might have to call the program with an absolute path or rearrange the PATH of the non-root user to make sure it sees your custom version first. Leave root's path alone so system updates use the vendor provided version.

BTW, I do this anyway as a matter of course with Apache and PHP because I need different compile-time options than what the vendor-provided packages provide. It gives me more flexibility. The downside is that I have to stay up to date with new source releases and bug fixes myself.

Stable, but pricey

[kent.dickey]

Redhat addreses a problem many Linux distributions have: guaranteed compatibility. I needed Linux to run the FPGA design tools from Xilinx. Xilinx makes their software tools available for Windows, Solaris, and Redhat Enterprise Linux WS 3 and 4. And I learned the hard way why they only support RHEL--every Linux is so different that I had a hard time getting the Xilinx tools to work on Fedora Core 3 even (the Fedora that's most similar to RHEL 4) and gave up and bought RHEL 4. I'm a long-time Unix user, so I know what I'm doing, but I'm not a Linux expert. For those interested, Xilinx tools need to install a binary kernel driver, and it seems every Fedora release changes some subtlety in how that should work, and I pulled the plug on my attempts after a day of trying (although about half that time was fighting partitioning problems--I eventually made a Knoppix Live CD and fixed everything with parted).

But RHEL WS is $180. Per year. This their "desktop" version--the server is $350-$1500. So if I want to get security updates for 3 years, my cost for one machine is $540. I know I'm getting more than security updates, but I don't really want more. Compare this to Windows XP Pro, which costs $120 (OEM), and provides free updates for many years. Or Mac OS X--about $120 (or "free" with a new machine) which provides free updates for many years. I think Redhat needs to cut their prices in half at least, and realize they're missing sub-enterprise customers: small businesses that want to run a stable Linux, but don't need a lot of support, just serve us the bits.

Now that I've made RHEL 4 work, and can see how the kernel driver install is supposed to work, I bet I could make Fedora work. It would seem to be in Redhat's interests to provide a desktop pricing point between $540 and $0.

Re:Stable, but pricey

[Corson]

Why did you try the "cutting-edge" Fedora rather than the RHEL clone CentOS?

Er, why didn't you try CentOS?

[rklrkl]

I can't understand why you're trying to get the design tools that are certified against RHEL 3 and 4 to work in Fedora! Why not use CentOS? It's free and is a near-identical clone of RHEL (only differences are any references to Red Hat and its logos, both of which are trademarked). And, yes, you can install binary kernel drivers intended for RHEL onto equivalent CentOS machines without any compatibility issues.

Re:Er, why didn't you try CentOS?

[kent.dickey]

Thank you for pointing out Centos.org, but you may have missed the part where I said "I'm not a Linux expert." I just read the CentOS.org website, and let's just say sites pirating movies and music are less cryptic in their intentions. If I hadn't bought RHEL and now recognize the numbering scheme of the versions, I would have had no idea that was RHEL 4 available. A quick google search found an article that said centos.org was asked by Redhat to remove all references to Redhat on the website, which explains the oddness of the site.

As for me trying Fedora: Umm, why shouldn't that work? I had read that RHEL 4 was based on Fedora Core 3, which is why I picked that version. It sure sounded reasonable to me.

Re:Er, why didn't you try CentOS?

[Frumious Wombat]

Welcome to the joys of Linux. This is one of the rare times when posting a "So what's the difference between RHEL and Fedora other than $200/yr" to here might have been worthwhile. After you sorted out the responses telling you to compile everything from scratch continually (Gentoo), or use completely free GNU/Linux (Debian), or use completely free GNU/Linux with a tasteful graphical front-end and some thoughts about the end-user (Ubuntu), you would have found that Fedora is a testing version where ideas are tried. RHEL is a much more slowly evolving beast that takes only the pieces from Fedora that are reliable and proven, and then supports them for years. In a way, Fedora is like the old consumer RedHat Linux, except on speed as it tries to keep ahead of the curve with new drivers, interface ideas, cutting-edge software, etc. It's a good choice for personal use, but it doesn't track RHEL closely enough to be used for validation. (I tried for a while to use it as a development system for a RHEL-based cluster, and finally gave up over library dependencies. Fedora rapidly got too far ahead of the cluster libraries, and went unsupported too quickly)

Don't feel bad; it's hard to find a free version of RHEL, though Centos is the current leader. After a while, you understand why vendors support it or SuSE's equivalent. This is one of those cases where sighing and signing the check really would have been the right answer.

Re:Er, why didn't you try CentOS?

[birder]

The folks at CentOS have to word their information carefully, or the wrath of Red Hat will once again come down on them. RH can't do anything with CentOS re-compiling their open source but they will strike if they use RH's trademarked name, logo, etc, on their site.

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[account_deleted]

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Alan Cox?

[cyberkahn]

Alan Cox, is that you?

Real-time... for next time?

[Corson]

The article doesn't mention real-time support so I guess RHEL-5 will not include such a feature. That's too bad because Novell already have it in SLERT and can price it as they want.

RHEL3

[joncombe]

I've not been at all impressed with RHEL. At work we use RHEL3. After an upgrade from RH7.3 we found that the C++ IOStream library was unable to open files >2GB in size. This is an issue with the C++ compiler version supplied with RHEL3. Red Hats' "solution" was that it would be fixed in RHEL4. Sorry, but in a product where support is the primary reason for paying, this is a very poor response.

Re:RHEL3

[Corson]

RHEL-4 was released a long time ago. I used to run RHEL-3 on my server and the online upgrade to RHEL-4 was very easy and no packages became broken in the prcess. Therefore I find it difficult to understand why you didn't get the upgrade. That being said, the KDE desktop RHEL-4 shipped with lacked some features and I strongly recommend the KDE-3.5 upgrade from the apt.kde-redhat.org repository.

RHEL 5 Release Notes

[Macka]

For those who are interested here are the release notes. The technology preview is particularly mouth watering. Personally I'm especially looking forward to GFS2.