First Look: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 | Linux Magazine: “Red Hat Enterprise Linux RHEL has long been a fixture in enterprise machine rooms. Robust, fast, and feature-rich, RHEL is often the standard by which other enterprise distributions are measured. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 RHEL5, Red Hat once again raises the bar for commercial Linux. CIOs, don the Red Hat.”
I thought I heard a huge sigh coming from the south this week: RHEL5’s delivery was tough labor, from what I understand. I’m looking forward to trying it out. All the features sound pretty cool: Xen integration, the Global File System, and better user interfaces for Security Enhanced Linux. The article above is a preview and the explanation of virtualization is a bit shaky, but the intent is right.
For a good explanation of why you want Red Hat, watch the funny videos here. The usual disclaimers apply: I liked Red Hat so much, I bought (one one-millionth of) the company. Pricing is better and competitive: there’s an $80 basic desktop with a year of web support and updates. Rather than buying “end-user” licenses, developers (yes, it’s still all about “developers, developers, developers, developers”) would much likely prefer the “Standard Developer Subscription” which for $299 gives a developer download access and 1-year support for up to five products, a much better deal than MSDN, more along the lines of the Action Pack or one of those promotions.