Submitted by Over two years have passed since Red Hat launched their last version of Enterprise Linux; today, their new version was released, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. There’s a review already: “This article will give you a first look at the new technology that has gone into the release. We also had a chance to talk to some folks within Red Hat to get the inside view on what RHEL 5 means in the context of the company’s new community-pleasing strategy.”
I thought RHEL 5 was the new one? The summary makes it sound as if 5 is two years old.
Fixed.
Edited 2007-03-14 18:10 UTC
It would be really nice if they would pre-load this OS on laptops/desktops for entry users.
RHEL is more enterprise/server than desktop (although it does have a desktop offering) so desktop users are not going to enjoy it too much. And while the full sources are available in the redhat FTP, installing redhat and using copyrigth requires buying a license AFAIK.
I received a version of RHEL3 when I took my RHCT at work a few years ago. I loaded it on my new machine I built for practice that week for the final test on Friday. I run Fedora Core 6 now I would run RHEL5 however I like Fedora and all the new stuff…
It would sell on the desktop/laptop if loaded but until you build it they will not come.
It would sell on the desktop/laptop if loaded but until you build it they will not come.
Unfortunately, they most likely will not come, even if you built it. Even though Linux today is a just as good desktop OS as windows, in some respects it is even better e.g. ease of installing software, compiz/beryl offer more usability than similar windows eye candy. Even server version like RHEL5 probably make a slightly better desktop than Vista.
The problem is that the desktop alone is not going to do the work people need to get done. For that, they need applications. Sure, Linux comes with a lot of apps and some of them are very good, but even the good ones are often only just as good or slightly better than the windows app it replaces, and in some cases they are even slightly worse than the corresponding windows app (e.g. Gimp vs Photoshop).
People are not going to switch to something that doesn’t give them significantly more than what they already have. They have invested lot of time and money into learning windows and the apps running on it. They are not going to switch even if they had the option to get it for free and preinstalled.
In essence Linux is very ready for the desktop, it is just that that space is already taken. The second Adobe, Autodesk and other vendors of popular port their software to Linux the Linux desktop will have a chance of making a serious dent in desktop market.
The only way to get out of this situation would probably be to try to invade the windows desktop with good free cross platform software. That way there would be fewer apps to for windows users to relearn. It would also expose windows only vendors to more competition, that hopefully will force them to expand their markets.
Anyway, Red Hat they are mainly interested in the server side, and are very good at it, so I suppose they will not have to worry.
Edited 2007-03-14 21:10
and where’s the pomp and fare like Apple or Microsoft?
Where’s the midnight lines and party at Frys and CompUSA?
Redhat is freaking miserly!!!!!
Edited 2007-03-14 18:31
If you knew what you were talking about, you would realise that Redhat garners much of its reputation from its rocking software support. Strangely, though I don’t run a business I somehow guess that that might be slightly more useful to a company than parties at Fry’s run by a company that couldn’t give two chopsticks about its customers’ servers.
Pray tell me, would YOU go out to a party at midnight at Fry’s to pick up the latest version of Windows Server or Mac OSX server?
RHEL isin’t really a consumer directed OS, hence the E (Enterprise). RHEL is mostly a server OS, though you can use it on workstations if you want. If you want a commercial desktop Linux, you want SLED*.
*Despite the support, I’d rather Ubuntu given the choice. Try to keep the distro wars out of this thread though
> RHEL isin’t really a consumer directed OS
Answer me this: is it Linux or not?. If you answer yes, then THERE IS ONLY ONE LINUX kernel and it’s not like Windows 2003 server were it’s a different kernel with different utilities.
Linux is Linux. Redhat ships Gnome desktop which is exactly the same as Fedora’s or Ubuntu’s Gnome desktop. There IS NO Server and Desktop differentiation in Linux.
Sorry but don’t foist your windows games on me. I ain’t buyin it.
You missed the point.
RHEL is not, nor is marketed as, a consumer OS
Neither is Windows Server 0x, or Mac OS Server, or Windows Vista Enterprise. All of these are ENTEPRISE operating systems. I don’t think once in my life I have seen anyone throw a party for a server OS. Mostly because the party-goers would be spending that time loading it on their testbed system (or VM) and poking/prodding it to make sure it fits their configurations.
Linux is indeed Linux, however some Linuxen are built differently then others (ships with different packages, kernel tuned differently, SELinux/AppArmor, etc.).
RHEL is usually run GUI-less and headless. It’s meant to run server apps (FirebirdDB, Apache, etc.) This is not a consumer-directed OS
Ubuntu, on the other hand, is usually run in full GUI (GNOME or KDE by preference), and runs desktop apps (Firefox, Evolution, Banshee…). That is what I would define as a consumer-directed OS.
Coming from a proud Ubuntu 7.04 user.
EDIT: tried to clarify post
EDIT2: typosies!
Edited 2007-03-14 20:39
Sorry but don’t foist your windows games on me. I ain’t buyin it.
“That’s not the software you’re looking for” — Obi Windows Kenobi?
Linux is Linux. … There IS NO Server and Desktop differentiation in Linux.
Actually, Linux is just a kernel, not an OS of any kind. A distro is an OS. Different distros are different OS’s. If a distro comes with Apache but no OpenOffice, for example, we call it a server OS, not a desktop OS. Even though it is still theoretically possible to install OpenOffice and use it on the desktop. There seems little point in doing so, as copious alternatives exist, so the differentiation makes sense. That’s why there’s more than one distro.
Also, of course, Linux itself can be configured in many different ways – tailored for a server or desktop environment.
You wrote:
Answer me this: is it Linux or not?. If you answer yes, then THERE IS ONLY ONE LINUX kernel and it’s not like Windows 2003 server were it’s a different kernel with different utilities.
Linux is Linux. Redhat ships Gnome desktop which is exactly the same as Fedora’s or Ubuntu’s Gnome desktop. There IS NO Server and Desktop differentiation in Linux.
Answer me this: Why waste precious seconds typing senseless comments?
Not all distros use the same kernel versions / features, and each one has its own selection of GNU programs. Saying “Linux is Linux” is shorthand for saying “I’ve never used GNU/Linux in my life”.
Edited 2007-03-15 15:28
Where’s the midnight lines and party at Frys and CompUSA?
I thought I saw you in line, must have been someone else!
what’s really sadder is that a big release from the biggest Linux vendor and we only reached about 25 posts.
Compared to that go see how many posts Vista got!
Only because there’s nothing to complain about.
Another fantastic product from RedHat. I can’t wait to try it out (or at least install the stolen CentOS version).
Yes, I’m installing CentOS 5 Beta as we speak. Let’s see…
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Another fantastic product from RedHat. I can’t wait to try it out (or at least install the stolen CentOS version).
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It’s not stolen. If you don’t want or need the support contract you don’t have to buy it. RedHat knows what they are doing.
CentOS complies with RedHat’s requirements.
RedHat even goes out of their way to make it possible. They would be within their legal rights to just do a raw code dump. But they package everything up into nice little SRPMS, even neatly factoring out the copyrighted and trademarked material for easy replacement.*
Good for them. Good for CentOS. Good for us. Good for… well, everyone, really.
*If you do misuse their trademarks you can expect a cease and desist letter, post-haste.
Edited 2007-03-16 00:52
Oops, I guess we have a wrong link here. The eweek article (first link) should point here:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2103846,00.asp
Red Hat is now selling individual Licenses for their desktop product
Good! I hope they are able to penetrate the market better with this strategy.
I have tried RHEL before and was impressed by the stablility but it lacked the good looks and latest little features and gizmos that i loved. Also, to get updates and support, I would have to buy it; I’m not willing to spend money for a linux distro since it is of little value to me. True there’s CentOS but it is still made up of the old packages. RHEL 5 also has a new feature: Installation Numbers. It’s like WPA for Linux. Serial numbers don’t go well with Linux. Sorry RedHat but with RHEL 5 is a big dissapintment.
Maybe you do not like serial numbers, maybe you do not like to pay for updates, so what ?
Industry like to have the guarantee that there is a company to help out if their IT goes tits up.
That is why companies pay RedHat, Sun, IBM, and Microsoft for service contracts. So there is someone to blame if the worse comes to the worse.
There is too many people who take the bums view that Linux is free, therefore nothing should warrant any type of payment. I have an idea for you, turn off the computer, get out of your mums cellar, go get a job in the IT industry, and in one or two months time, you might have a teenie weenie bit of a clue.
I downloaded RHEL 5 right away this afternoon… was very curious to try out the xen stuff; tried a beta in the past for a short while, but was unable to try the fully virtualized thing since I had no machine with VT available.
Now I have I’m a bit disappointed. First I’m bothered by a bunch of errors while trying to create a machine. Most are SElinux related: if the virt-manager creates an disk-image, the context is wrong, and it apparently doesn’t fix it… if I use a physical disk (lvm) I also get SElinux errors… I can’t change the context, apparently this is locked too… Almost sounds like this part of Xen isn’t very much (beta)tested in combination with SElinux? Maybe I overlooked a note that if I want to use virtualisation I shouldn’t use SElinux, but that doesn’t sound likely and therefore this feels a bit messy.
Then I tried to create a fully virtualised VM with SElinux in permissive mode; that works, I get a couple of other notifications about contexts that didn’t match (these notifications are a nice enhancement!), the running VM is never saved perhaps due some other errors, but also another disappointment: FreeBSD doesn’t run in the fully virtualized VM. ARGH! Perhaps I expected too much of this.
(I must dig into this btw, I noticed some bits are qemu, allthough I really thought I was using Xen here. Not sure if it’s only the display thingy – perhaps it’s that I’m using Xen for para-virt, and qemu for full virt?)
I expect a lot more of paravirtualization. The other bits I’ve seen look nice… (This full virt. was just something I had to try first ;-))
I was a bit confused by the installation numbers… must have to do with the selection of packages I’m entitled to (like virtualization, clustering and so forth) but I think I’d rather had something easier than this. I’d still have to create a kickstart, but with this release I’ll need it more than ever: also since there is no minimal install anymore.
Well, curious what others experience with RHEL5. I’ve mixed feelings: excited about a new release, but it doesn’t look that polished as I expected.
Now I have I’m a bit disappointed. First I’m bothered by a bunch of errors while trying to create a machine. Most are SElinux related: if the virt-manager creates an disk-image, the context is wrong, and it apparently doesn’t fix it…
I am not sure if this is the case with RHEL 5, but it IS the case with FC6 (and so is liable to be the case on RHEL).
Check out this link http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraXenQuickstartFC6#head-bb2bd…
Bassically, if you want to use disk images you have to put them in /var/lib/xen/images then the context is right.
if I use a physical disk (lvm) I also get SElinux errors… I can’t change the context, apparently this is locked too…
I am not sure why you are getting these, again my expearience is with Fedora, so is not directly translatable, however I only get one error on starting up a xen guest (and only on the first one to be started per session), is regarding the network interface, however there is no noticable problem in functionality.
I’ll be interested to test RHEL 5, when I have a chance.
Almost sounds like this part of Xen isn’t very much (beta)tested in combination with SElinux? Maybe I overlooked a note that if I want to use virtualisation I shouldn’t use SElinux, but that doesn’t sound likely and therefore this feels a bit messy.
I hope this is not true, the more I play with Xen of FC6 the more I love the whole idea.
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Most are SElinux related: if the virt-manager creates an disk-image, the context is wrong, and it apparently doesn’t fix it…
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I find that to do anything useful with Fedora or RHEL you should turn SELinux off.
It’s better for your security, too. Because then you, as a mere mortal, can know exactly what the permissions on your server are allowing, rather than relying upon the gobbledygook in the default SELinux policy provided by a vendor that barely understands it themselves.
Edited 2007-03-16 01:03
Actually there is no reason to turn SELinux off at all. It is better to install SETroubleshooter to report conflicting policies to bugzilla to improve SELinux policies. It turned out the issue was Xen which is fixed on Fedora Core 6.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SELinux
I’ve been able to get paravirtualized RHEL5 guests on logical volumes with SELinux set to enforcing working just fine. And that is SELinux set to enforcing on both the guest and the host.
Host and guests are all running RHEL5 GA.
Edited 2007-03-14 20:33
Para virt and full virt, no problem. On a laptop no less! Even passed all the RHEL hardware certification tests.
I love this release.