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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."

27 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. 2000 packages? 85% more code? by blair1q · · Score: 3, Funny

    RH6: software you can weigh...

    1. Re:2000 packages? 85% more code? by Xtifr · · Score: 3, Informative

      Debian has "over 25000". If RHEL6 is "software you can weigh", then Debian must be "software designed to break your scale". :)

      (Note: this is not a claim that "Debian is better" or any such nonsense. Merely pointing out that 2000 packages is hardly an impressive or unprecedented feat in itself.)

    2. Re:2000 packages? 85% more code? by martin-boundary · · Score: 3, Funny

      Nonono, 2000 is the year the packages were released. This is really RH6 :)

  2. 10 years for one version? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Chrome will be up to version 783 (beta) in 10 years!

  3. erode Windows server how? by cschepers · · Score: 5, Informative

    At my workplace, Red Hat server licensing is pricier than Windows Server licensing. I'd love to move servers off Windows, but it'll be hard to justify if it costs more.

    1. Re:erode Windows server how? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's amazing. It's also how Microsoft kicked ATT out of the marketplace in the early 1990's. ATT wanted $75 per OEM PC license; Microsoft wanted $10. The rest is history.

    2. Re:erode Windows server how? by xiando · · Score: 4, Informative

      Fedora is a really bad choice for enterprise environments. Fedora provides updates for 13 months. RHEL has a 7 year lifecycle. Enough said.

      --
      9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
    3. Re:erode Windows server how? by DrgnDancer · · Score: 4, Informative

      On a per server basis, maybe, but once you pay for a year of Red Hat support you're done. No per seat licenses. It's like $200 (more now? I don't know.. I don't actually handle the money part) to "license" a server for a year (really for a year's worth of support). That's it. Got 2 users? $200. Got 2000 users? $200. The support is good too. Got a problem? Open a ticket. They'll pretty much solve it for you, no per incident charges.

      --
      I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
    4. Re:erode Windows server how? by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Windows Server Licenses do not include support. There is your price difference.

    5. Re:erode Windows server how? by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've always thought that one should pay for support on a per-incident basis for software that one considers reliable. Count your incidents per year for the last few years and do the math.

    6. 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.

    7. Re:erode Windows server how? by sdguero · · Score: 4, Informative

      And, as a poster above mentioned, there aren't client limitations like with windows server.

    8. Re:erode Windows server how? by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Informative

      Touche, but windows licensing really does get people into trouble. I have seen many small shops who had no CALs and in some cases no Sharepoint CALs. They were upset when they found out you had to buy the software and then the right to use it separately. I really think Microsoft does this on purpose, since violations can turn into real money very quickly.

    9. Re:erode Windows server how? by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Informative

      https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/

      RHEL support is good for 10 years these days.

  4. RHEL comes with free CALs by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    Red Hat server licensing is pricier than Windows Server licensing.

    At first, I guessed that it might have something to do with the common conception that one can run more things on a single Red Hat server than on a single Windows server. But a couple Google searches later, I found this Microsoft white paper claiming that Red Hat doesn't charge for client access licenses for RHEL.

    1. 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").

    2. 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).

  5. Re:Only 2000 packages by kwalker · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you install EPEL you'll get an additional 4600+ packages.

    However RHEL/CentOS are server operating systems, so a lot of packages that make sense on desktops are omitted.

    --
    ... And so it comes to this.
  6. 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
  7. 85% increase in code? by onyxruby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I distinctly remember when a lack of bloat was one of Linux's bragging points. What happened to Red Hat? Time was they were also once cheaper than the windows servers they lampooned.

    1. Re:85% increase in code? by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Informative

      1. You don't have to install all that crap.
      2. RHEL includes support, so they still are cheaper.

  8. Re:CentOS by rayvd · · Score: 4, Informative

    Usually takes 6 weeks or so. You can follow the CentOS twitter feed here to keep up.

    In addition, sounds like there may be new ways shortly for tracking CentOS development.

  9. Official RHEL blog post by trawg · · Score: 4, Informative

    No official link given in the OP, but here's the Red Hat blog post, titled "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6: A Technical Look at Red Hat’s Defining New Operating Platform", which gives a good look at some of the changes.

    The less-interesting press releases are here (Red Hat Enables Expanded Deployment Flexibility and Application Portability with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6) and here (Red Hat Sets a New Standard for the Next Generation of Operating Systems).

  10. Windows network effect by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Alas, right now I'm moving many services from RHEL to Windows 2008 Server.

    Why? Group Policy, and Volume Shadow Copy Service.

    I cannot overstate the importance of Group Policy in simplifying the management of a client network. Especially when combined with Windows Software Update Services, it's been wonderful. I've been a Linux guy since forever, but I'm really being swayed against my will toward the Windows server stuff for managing Windows clients.

    As for the Volume Shadow Copy Service - it's all well and good to have 10-minutely Bacula incrementals thoughout the day, but nothing beats near-zero-cost snapshots that automatically age out when space is exhausted and that are very space efficient because they're done at the file system level. No, LVM cannot do this, it's block level and thus wastes a lot of space snapshotting changes to "free" space etc. Additionally, snapshots must be mounted, and old snapshots age out rather ungracefully. I've had a server fail to boot because of a broken LVM snapshot multiple times, and it's a major piss-off. It can't touch versioned files in NTFS. Maybe BTRFS will be there in 5 years.

    Truly, though, it's Samba's quirks/limitations, and the lack of Group Policy, that's driven me to drop Linux for managing Windows clients. This isn't surprising, as Microsoft doesn't want to make it easy to manage Windows clients with anything other than Windows servers, and while the Samba folks are doing a heroic job there's only so much they can do.

    1. Re:Windows network effect by CAIMLAS · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There are a couple ways around doing this, but none of them seem to make much sense from a time investment perspective - your's included.

      There's something to be said for 'knowing' through GPOs and the like, what's on a system. You can't do this with registry hacks.

      As for LVM2... I've avoided it like the plague that it is: slow/inefficient and buggy are good words for it. It's also awkward to manage.

      This is what I've done... we've got a Windows domain for our Windows servers (mostly terminal servers), and a domain for our Windows workstations. The Windows servers are all virtualized, and workstations are locked down to a bare minimum - most of what they use now is either online or on the terminal servers. Heavy, non-networked applications, like Office, remain on the workstations.

      The virtual hosts, as well as a mess of BSD and OpenSol/Nexenta servers, are all on Kerberos + LDAP. Samba is on systems where it is appropriate to allow one or more domain to access files. Anything important goes on in Unixland, and the ZFS snapshots kick the snot out of VSS. In fact, with the ZFS SAN and XenServer, I'm able to integrate VSS into ZFS to take snapshots at the SAN level transparently. I can ship those over the network to another system for backup using the snapshot mechanisms.

      Currently, I'm playing with the idea of Samba 4 on the Unix machines, because it's easier to handle (though the maturity isn't there yet for AD master, and you sort of need to know what you're doing - while having a fairly intimate understanding of krb5 and ldap in the process). I might be able to do away with the use of a handful of pricey CALs for the Windows servers while improving network file transfer performance for the users by doing this: somehow, beta Samba still manages to trump W2k8R2 for CIFS performance.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
  11. Re:Moron quasi journalists by codepunk · · Score: 4, Funny

    16 or 128TB of ram, I would call those java ready platforms.

    --


    Got Code?
  12. Re:directory Server ? by buchanmilne · · Score: 4, Informative

    Does this include the directory server that mac's and windows machines can work with ?

    Windows machines have poor support for "directory servers" compared to most other OSs. If you mean an Active Directory replacement, no, because Windows machines expect that Active Directory has LDAP, Kerberos, CIFS, DNS and a few other services *all* running on the "directory server" (where other OSs allow these to be separated and/or scaled differently). If you need AD support with GPOs etc., you can consider trying samba4, but it's still in alpha (although some sites are running it in production). If you just need to authenticate Windows desktops, and don't need GPO-only features (but user/group policies are sufficient, if crufty), samba-3.5 as provided in RHEL6 may be sufficient.

    The OpenLDAP included with RHEL6 is good enough for all other operating systems with support for "directory servers", including Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, Solaris, AIX etc.

    Of course, RH would prefer to sell you RHDS subscriptions ...