Red Hat Inc. Monday announced the availability of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 beta, code-named Nahant.This is the first public beta of Red Hat’s next-generation enterprise Linux operating system. It is also the first version RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) to appear that is based on the Linux 2.6 kernel.
Before this, Fedora Core 2, Red Hat’s community-based Linux, was the company’s only 2.6-based offering. However, Fedora, a general-purpose Linux distribution, comes with no technical support. Its audience is not the enterprise, but rather Linux users who are willing to put in the time to make the most of a cutting-edge Linux distribution.
News source: eWeek
The RHEL 4 beta, however, is a preview of Red Hat’s next suite of desktop and server enterprise operating systems.Linux 2.6 has been out since December 2003, but enterprise Linux distributors have not rushed it to market.Novell Inc.’s SuSE Linux division became the first major U.S. enterprise Linux distributor to bring a 2.6-kernel based Linux with its August release of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.
