Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Released

OrenWolf writes "CNET is running an article on the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, which is Red Hat's shiny new 'enterprise' version of Linux. Major changes include more IBM Mainframe support, support for AMD64 (x86_64) processors (aka Opteron, Athlon64 and AthlonFX), changes to support options, integration of Stronghold Apache, and much more."

Benchmarks?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about some Sparc/Solaris vs Opteron/Solaris vs Opteron/RH3.0 benchmarks for server, database etc.

GPL compliance...

[chill]

Since a discussion about RH's licenses with these seem to pop up every time they are mentioned on /., I thought I'd point out that source RPMs for RHEL 3 are located on Red Hat's FTP server. .iso images are not available.

No one said they had to make it EASY...

Red Hat's movin' on up

[Qweezle]

Let me tell you; I own stock in Red Hat, I've researched their business strategies fervently...and these people know what they are doing with open source software. Red Hat posted a profit of 240,000 for the last quarter, the first profit EVER for a company mainly based on open-source software. Red Hat is moving forward, and fast, and there is no denying that soon, very soon, they could destroy Microsoft's server market share, and possibly kill poor ol' Sun Micrososystems(who I also own stock in). Red Hat, by the way, is a steal at its current 12.81 price, but I got in at 10.70. ;-)

No software death here

[693746]

It's interesting that while Microsoft is praising their new products at the expense of their old ones [washingtonpost.com], Red Hat is still pimping their old Enterprise Linux, version 2.1, even after they've rolled out a shiny new offering. From the RHEL 2.1 page [redhat.com], which is linked directly off of the RHEL 3 [redhat.com] page:

While version 3 provides many compelling new features, some customers will wish to continue to use version 2.1.

And then they go on to detail three reasons [redhat.com] why you would want to stick with the old version!

A company offering an honest assessment of their new product offerings? What's going on? Is it April already?

Re:Red Hat's movin' on up

[Brian Stretch]

I've researched their business strategies fervently...and these people know what they are doing with open source software.

Except for their limiting x86-64 support to their enterprise version and not including it in the-version-that-follows-9 (codenamed Severn), which has me (a paid-up RHN subscriber) looking at SuSE 9. Yeah, because Linux geeks just aren't going to be interested in playing with shiny new toys like the Athlon 64 or multiprocessor Opteron machines...

(No, I don't have one. Yet. Been busy with classes. Trying to hold out for a semi-affordable Athlon 64 notebook. This one [voodoopc.com] is exceptionally nice, but not quite within my budget, sigh.)

Then again, that still puts RH well ahead of Microsoft. Hey Bill, thanks for the encouragement to switch over to Linux full-time!

Do you HAVE to pay the $149...legally that is?

[leereyno]

Ok so Redhat is charging $149 for their spiffy new version of Linux. Fine. Unlike some I'm not under the influence of mind-altering ideologies. But that doesn't mean that I want to pay $149 for EVERY system I install it on. I'm THE Linux support for ASU's Fulton school of engineering, and we've got almost two hundred systems (that I know of) running one version of Linux or another. I'm the person who has to keep these systems running, and that means it's my job to keep them up to date and make sure they're running a version of Linux that we can expect to see vendor supplied patches and security fixes for. Lets just say I'm not happy about the fact that after the end of the year I'll have to create my own update RPM's whenever a remote vulnerability is found in some package or another. And now I find that even updates to RH 9 are going to end in April of 2004. What does this mean for the school? Either we move over to the new enterprise version, or we start looking real hard at Mandrake, SuSe, etc.

Which brings me back to my original question. Does anyone know if there are non-GPL'd components included in the new Enterprise version and if so what they are? I'm not going to go around installing proprietary for $$$$ software on people's system illegally, and I'm not going to be able to ask them to pony up $149 per copy when the copy of Redhat the system is already running didn't cost them a dime. So if anyone knows anything, even rumors, I'd really like to know. If I can surgically remove the proprietary components from the system I will as long as they are not critical to its operation. Of course if Redhat is simply charging $149 for the service of being able to download their distro and aren't looking to prevent you from installing it on as many systems as you'd like (sans support obviously), then I'll be more than happy to pay the money to get those ISO images. I've never contacted them for support yet, so why should I need to start?

Lee

$792 for AMD64 support...

[dameron]

Ouch!

And that's for their workstation configuration...

$179 for the x86 version.

-dameron

Heavy premiums for AMD64 support

[Alea]

The prices on the AMD64 versions are nutty. I understand they have to recoup development costs for the new architecture and that they only expect rich businesses to use it on expensive servers, but I'm testing Opteron for research purposes at a university. There's no way we can afford that in the long haul.

Anyone know if AMD64 support is expected for Fedora? Or what cheaper AMD64 distributions are around? Do they work? The actual details on AMD64 support on distributions' sites are very sketchy.

Re:CheapBytes

[DaveAtFraud]

The VP for Engineering and the software director where I work both come from a Windows company. They both seem to have a hard time with something that's free being better than something you pay (and pay and pay and pay) for. At least we're on Linux for now and the salary is good. I'll bail when they say we're going to port to Windoze.

I've said it in another context but I'll say it again here, there's got to be a way to make an honest buck just telling people like this, "Don't buy the bridge."

S I G H

is there any "backlash" against EW?

[slavitos]

There's another article [com.com] discussing this release and they bring up an interesting issue:

"At the same time Red Hat created the Enterprise Linux line, which changes slowly so hardware and software companies have time to adjust to changes and certify their products, it has given more free reign to its other version, now called Fedora, which is available for free. Because Red Hat doesn't have to worry about Fedora certification, support or retail sales, the company can rapidly move new technology into it so new features will mature faster. The only hitch is that some customers had grown accustomed to a free version that was better adapted for serious use rather than just experimentation. "

I have to say I am not sure what my own opinion is (except that I didn't realize Fedora was a distribution, but that's just my ignorance). Anybody else picking up the same (mixed) signal here?

Time Warp

[Per Wigren]

We're using RH ES 2.1 for a few servers at work (a big hospital in Sweden).. Most servers are still HPUX and NT4 but we're slowly (too slowly IMHO) migrating to Linux. I had been praising Linux for a LONG time when we finally got our first copy of RH ES to install on a production-server. It was a big surprise for me.. I have been using Linux since 1996. Started with RH 4.2, then Debian and have been running Gentoo for little more than 2 years now.

RH ES 2.1 was like a time warp back to the 90s. Only ext2/3 filesystems. Where the hell is LVM?? It was hard to convince my fellow coworkers (HPUX and Solaris fanatics) how a Unix without LVM can be considered "enterprise"... But eventually I convinced then. :) We now have 3 production servers running RH ES2.1 (two running webservices with apache+tomcat, one running Sybase).

We've had a lot of problems with them though.. They start to become SLOOOOW after a few days of uptime under load.. Load avg is 0.0 to 0.1, cpu is 99% idle, but they are so slow it takes a good minute or two just to start "top". I think I tracked the problem down to the cciss-driver and upgrading to the latest kernel (e.27) seemed to fix the problem somewhat (still slow but not nearly as slow as when running e.16).
I really hope ES3.0 will fix our problems! Otherwise my dream of someday running Linux on all of our servers just went down the drain because I don't think that neither management or my fellow coworkers will let me install another distribution (oh no! not ANOTHER set of commands/configfile-system to learn!)