Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is a commercial Linux distribution developed by Red Hat and targeted toward the business market. First released in 2000, it is based on the Fedora project but is designed with a focus on stability, long-term support, and certification for enterprise hardware and software. The operating system is widely deployed in data centers, cloud computing environments, and for critical workloads across various industries.

History

The origins trace back to the original Red Hat Linux, a popular distribution first released in the mid-1990s. In 2003, the company formally split its offerings, creating the community-driven Fedora project as the upstream source and focusing its commercial efforts. A pivotal moment in its adoption was its certification on major hardware platforms from vendors like IBM, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard. The acquisition of the company by IBM in 2019 further solidified its position within the enterprise IT landscape, integrating it deeply with products like IBM Cloud and IBM Watson. Throughout its evolution, it has played a central role in the growth of open-source software in corporate environments, influencing projects like the CentOS rebuild.

Features

It is renowned for its robust security features, including SELinux, which was originally developed by the National Security Agency, and comprehensive auditing with the Audit subsystem. The system utilizes the YUM and later DNF package managers to handle RPM Package Manager files, ensuring reliable software management. For high-performance computing and scalability, it supports technologies like Kernel-based Virtual Machine for virtualization and integrates with OpenShift for container orchestration. Other key components include the Firewalld dynamic firewall manager, the GNOME desktop environment, and strong support for development toolsets and programming languages like GCC, Python, and OpenJDK.

Versions

Major releases follow a predictable schedule, with each version receiving full support for ten years. Significant historical versions include the foundational release, version 3, which introduced the kernel from the UnitedLinux effort, and version 5, a long-lived release that saw widespread deployment. Version 7 brought major changes like the adoption of systemd and XFS as the default file system. The current major stream, version 9, is based on Fedora 34 and the kernel version 5.14, featuring enhanced security with integrity measurement architecture and newer toolchains. Each major release is accompanied by regular minor updates, such as the recent 9.4, which provide hardware enablement and backported security fixes.

Derivatives and alternatives

The most historically significant derivative was CentOS, a free, community-supported rebuild that was functionally binary-compatible, until its strategic shift was announced in 2020. In response, the CentOS project created CentOS Stream, which serves as a rolling preview. Other notable rebuilds include Oracle Linux from Oracle Corporation and Scientific Linux, originally created by Fermilab. In the broader commercial Linux distribution market, primary competitors include SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from SUSE and Ubuntu from Canonical. For cloud-native environments, minimal container images like Red Hat Universal Base Image provide a foundation for building applications.

Support and lifecycle

It offers one of the industry's longest and most structured support lifecycles, typically spanning ten years for each major release. This period is divided into Full Support and Maintenance Support phases, with the former providing new hardware drivers and major software updates, and the latter focusing solely on critical security patches and urgent bug fixes. Extended Lifecycle Support is also available for purchase for versions past their standard end-of-life. Support subscriptions, managed through the Red Hat Customer Portal, provide access to knowledge bases, security advisories, and technical assistance from Red Hat Global Support Services. This model is a key differentiator from free community distributions and is integral to its value proposition for running stable workloads on platforms like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Category:Linux distributions Category:Red Hat software