First Look at RHEL 5 - From the New, More Open Red Hat

Susie D writes "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 was released today, and Linux Format has an in-depth first look (with screenshots aplenty). With RHEL 5, Red Hat aims to become even more 'open', by using a shorter and clearer SLA, improving community involvement through its Knowledge Base, and providing the new Red Hat Exchange. But what you really want to know is, yes, it does include XGL for fancy 3D desktop effects."

Red Hat rubs be the wrong way...

[Anonymous Coward]

"RHEL used to come in four main strands: ES, AS, WS and Desktop, although the Desktop product was sold as a pack of ten clients along with a copy of RHEL ES, the server version. With RHEL 5, Red Hat has swept all of that away in favour of a simpler structure. Instead of distributing the four sets independently, Red Hat will provide only two main sets, referred to as Server and Client. Subscribers are issued with installation keys that pre-define package manifests depending on the subscription level."

There is something about a Linux distributor telling me that I am limited as to how many clients I can install based on how much money I pay that just rubs be the wrong way. How can they do this and not go afoul of the GPL?

I have not used Red Hat for a number of years. Do they even have a free as in beer download of their client? If I pay am I not allowed to distribute the GPL'd product as I see fit?? Do they prevent redistribution by bundling in non-GPL stuff?

Like I said, it has been years since I used Red Hat so I really don't know what they're like now.

Screenshots, who cares?

[jfroot]

I always wondered why these articles focus on screenshots. I would assume most people who are running RHEL don't ever use any graphical interface at all. Servers don't need to run any graphical applications really and it is a waste of system resources to have any of that left on IMHO.

First thing I do to a shiny new Redhat install is:

perl -i -p -e s/id\:6\:in/id\:3\:in/ /etc/inittab

To disable X11 completely. You should to.

Let's look at it this way . . .

[mmell]

If it's a server, your default init state should be runlevel 3, right? Doesn't matter if you've installed all the XGL stuff in the world if it never gets run (for the most part; carrying unnecessary executables/packages/services around on your system does potentially open vulnerabilities in your system).

You should never take a server to runlevel 5 unless it's been taken out of service for maintenance - and not even then! Just because a GUI may make you able to more quickly or more simply maintain your server doesn't mean that it's okay to run X on a server. GUI's tend to "dumb down" user tasks (that is their function, after all). GUI's have progressed over the last decade, but they still carry their penalties in system load, "dumb-down" factor and increased vulnerability to exploitation.

As for using RHEL as a desktop, I agree wholeheartedly. Everyone knows that Gnome under OpenSuSE 10.2 is the ultimate XGL desktop experience!

What about Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, now that we the Fedora legacy users have been left alone in the cold, and even though I know this is just a Redhat Enterprise post, let me throw this out:

How easy is switching from one of the "legacy" Fedora editions (4,5) to the latest Redhat Enterprise or CentOS? Anyone has switched already?

I wonder if all the packages and their configurations would be upgraded correctly. I have been using Redhat/Fedora for quite a while, and never got any major problems.

'Switch to Debian/Ubuntu/other' is not accepted as an valid answer :)

Re:$349.99?

[dustwun]

While this may come across as sucking up, RedHat deserves LARGE kudos for releasing the src.rpms so readily. Most other commercial vendors don't do this (Look at suse for example). While redhat has made some missteps in the linux business(if you believe ESR), they have stuck to the open source ideals more than most other vendors and still managed to be successful.

Re:XGL?

[Wdomburg]

'What's the benefit, support?

A stable platform that will continue receiving security updates until 2014.

Re:CentOS

[Anonymous Coward]

i have to agree actually. i've been playing and rhel5 is actually a pretty nice os. i like ubuntu, but after the last release fiasco, and my company suffering a few DAYS of downtime because of ubuntu, we're seriously considering switching to Redhat. this release so far has made me happy from what i've seen and i just looked at their support options and find out the support actually might be worth looking into http://www.redhat.com/promo/vendor/ [redhat.com] can't really beat that!