Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Red Hat Releases RHEL 6

Posted by samzenpus on from the new-kid-on-the-block dept.

alphadogg writes "Red Hat on Wednesday released version 6 of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution. 'RHEL 6 is the culmination of 10 years of learning and partnering,' said Paul Cormier, Red Hat's president of products and technologies, in a webcast announcing the launch. Cormier positioned the OS both as a foundation for cloud deployments and a potential replacement for Windows Server. 'We want to drive Linux deeper into every single IT organization. It is a great product to erode the Microsoft Server ecosystem,' he said. Overall, RHEL 6 has more than 2,000 packages, and an 85 percent increase in the amount of code from the previous version, said Jim Totton, vice president of Red Hat's platform business unit. The company has added 1,800 features to the OS and resolved more than 14,000 bug issues."

4 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Still the gold standard of long-supported releases by proxima · · Score: 4, Interesting

    RHEL provides a 7 year lifecycle, which is unmatched by the other major distributions I know about (even Debian). This is crucial for the enterprise; I know of a number of systems which are still running RHEL3 after 6-7 years. Upgrading production computers is not a trivial process, and 2-3 year lifecycles just don't cut it in some situations.

    --
    "The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
  2. Re:erode Windows server how? by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Redhat would never make a dime.
    Truth is lots of places use Centos as it is now.

    RHEL should offer site licenses or something like that. No need to be cheaper just even more easy to deal with. The lack of CALs and different levels of the OS already makes them easier to deal with than windows licensing.

  3. Re:RHEL comes with free CALs by seifried · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Or you can just install CentOS which is Red Hat minus the artwork and the word "Red Hat" like most of us. I find Linux generally stable/reliable enough that I don't need support (I can't even remember my last Linux server crash, it's been years and stuff "just works").

  4. Re:RHEL comes with free CALs by cduffy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's fine and dandy if it's just your own server hooked up to your cable, but when it matters, going without support isn't a realistic option no matter how good the software is.

    It's also fine and dandy if you have an in-house systems engineering team who can hack anything from the kernel through the app layer.

    I've been part of that team at multiple shops. It's a pretty fun role -- lots of variety (everything from patching buggy DSDTs in the firmware of the servers we were using to extending the virtualization libraries with features we needed and pushing those upstream... and everything inbetween).

    Not everyone needs a support contract, even if they're doing Serious Business. Indeed, if you're running tens of thousands of relatively cheap servers, those support contracts can be pretty expensive. (Not nearly as expensive as power and cooling, to be sure, but not entirely trivial either).