Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Launches Enterprise Linux 5


Red Hat released Wednesday a new version of its Linux operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5). The new OS, which the Raleigh, North Carolina-based company said is more of a platform, is accompanied by RHEL 5 Advanced Platform for server and an updated Enterprise Desktop.

Three prepackaged solutions, based on the Advanced Platform, were also announced. They are the Red Hat Datacenter Solution, a turnkey solution to run a data center on open source; the Red Hat Database Availability Solution, designed to enable existing databases to run as reliably as clustered database systems; and the Red Hat High Performance Computing Solution, a platform for solving computational problems for engineers, financial analysts, and others.

Advanced Platform allows customers "to greatly reduce the cost and complexity of purchasing, integrating, and managing separate virtualization, storage management and high availability software," Paul Cormier, Red Hat executive vice president of engineering, said in a statement.

Red Hat Exchange

Red Hat is also trying to take the lead as the portal for open-source software. It will launch Red Hat Exchange, an online market where users can buy, sell, and rate open-source software, including those from other open-source-based companies such as SugarCRM, Al Fresco Software, and MySQL.

Red Hat has said that Exchange, launching in the second quarter, will offer only software that Red Hat guarantees will work with its products, for which it will offer technical support.

On Thursday, IBM and Red Hat announced their joint efforts to integrate new technologies into the Linux kernel that will offer improved virtualization, security, and real-time capabilities. The features will be available in the new release of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 5.

The two companies said that the real-time features enable customers to obtain higher processing rates at high levels of reliability. The virtualization software enables several virtual machines to operate on a single server.

Challenging Miscrosoft

"It's clear that Red Hat is moving aggressively to compete with Windows Server 2003 Data Center, Solaris, and HP Unix," said Laura DiDio, an analyst with Yankee Group. "Not just in servers, but also applications, and at the high end."

She noted that the list price for a Red Hat license over three, four, or five years is actually more expensive than Windows Server 2003. "But I.T. people like that they can customize the code," she said, "and that they are not locked into a license with Microsoft."

And can the new Red Hat offerings help Linux achieve broad acceptance at the desktop? "The Red Hat Exchange could provide a major boost to third-party Linux providers," she said, including possibly Linux desktop applications.

Pricing for the OS and for the Advanced Platform will be the same as for the previous versions, Red Hat said.