Redhat Linux

In addition it also provides a 'free' version of it's distribution called Fedora, which typically contains newer versions of the kernel and core applications than appear in it's commercial offering.

Redhat initially made a splash in 1995 when it entered the Linux market place and for many years took the lead in producing what was widely accepted as "the" main Linux distribution, certainly for those in the commercial world.

This was in part due to their commercial support options , typically not offered by other vendors.

Rise and Fall ...

Although many people recognise the RedHat name, you will notice that it no longer appears on the list of free versions of Linux. In 2002/2003 RedHat decided to change the way it did things and announced that Redhat Version 9.x would be discontinued and it would instead continue supplying the Redhat Enterprise version only. (which was only available for a fee)

It is unclear 'exactly' what RedHat expected the market to do, but for a certain percentage the inclination was to start evaluating other distributions with a view to looking for a replacement. From my perspective this was a rather unfortunate step as I found a number of potentially superior distributions of which I was formerly unaware.

The birth of Fedora

2003 saw the launch of RedHat's alternative to supplying a free version of their commercial operating system distribution, they called it Fedora. The technical explanation offered was that this would incorporate much newer software than they could include in their commercial release, which would make it far more competitive with other newer distributions.

We can't help thinking however that this was simply a way to get people to test newer versions of RedHat prior to incorporating new code into their commercial code tree. Certainly when they discontinued version 9 they lost quite a number of Open Source users who will have doubled as testers.

Initial versions of Fedora, speaking as a user, were not great. Indeed Fedora claimed to support 64bit processors and in my experience, in 2003 their 64bit distribution was pretty much unusable, certainly from the point of view of a developer.

Gnome

One of the main draws to RedHat (for many users) was their adoption of the Gnome desktop when the majority of other vendors seemed to be plumping for KDE. I always think of Gnome as being the American desktop, and KDE the European desktop, but perhaps this analysis is a little too political.

Certainly KDE is far more 'Microsoft Compatible' and indeed I believe the API was written with the porting of Windows Applications to Linux in mind, rather than (as Gnome did) stepping back and designing something applicable to Linux 'from scratch'.

Anyway, when RedHat was withdrawn, those who found Fedora a little disappointing really had only one place to turn, so I guess the guys at Ubuntu owe at least some thanks to the guys at RedHat.

Contributions

In addition to their commercial offerings RedHat over the years have made a real difference to the Linux community in a number of ways, firstly in development. They have sponsored many projects which have become integral parts of many distributions, not just their own. They are also responsible for carrying the Gnome flag when many others abandoned it in favour KDE.

In particular it contributes to;

• The Linux kernel
• Xorg
• GFS, LVM2 and clustering tools
• Components of Firefox
• gnome.org (hosting and bandwidth)
• pango, glib, gtk+, metacity, nautilus etc etc ..
  

 You can find a more complete list with details on the Fedora site.

The product

I'm not really familiar with the current versions of RedHat Enterprise other than to say it's thought of as a fairly standard / stable beast on which has been the subject of  many books. Indeed if you're looking for a commercial system on which you can obtain commercial support and hire people with directly relevant qualifications (RedHat offer a certification scheme) then this is probably the distribution for you.

Although I can taste just a tinge of sour grapes about the way I and many others were effectively ejected from the RedHat community back in 2003, if you compare (from what I read) the Redhat Enterprise edition with (from what I've experienced) Ubuntu Server edition, there isn't really much competition.

If I couldn't fall back on free components of the RedHat / Fedora OS, I wouldn't actually be able to make Ubuntu Server work for me.

At the end of the day, it's still a good bit cheaper than comparable non-Unix offerings, you can see pricing details here.

- If anyone who uses RedHat Enterprise would like to comment further we'd be grateful for the feedback.