The Secret to Red Hat’s Success
An enterprise Linux "expert" answers the question: "How can an open source software company like Red Hat stay in business if CentOS - and Red Hat itself - give their code away for free?"
Red Hat Archive
Red Hat Finally Nears Real-Time Linux Launch
For the last several years, Red Hat has been pushing forward the development of real-time enhancements for Linux. Yet the company has made no formal product announcement of how it would attempt to productize its real-time Linux innovations. That changed today, with the announcement of the Red Hat MRG (Messaging, Real Time and Grid) platform. The product is expected to be available as a public beta this month, with a generally available release set for early 2008.
Red Hat Releases RHEL 5.1 with Greatly Improved Virtualization
Red Hat announced Nov. 7 the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, with integrated virtualization. In claims that Red Hat representatives were well aware are extremely broad reaching, they said the new release will provides the most compelling platform for customers and software developers ever, with its industry-leading virtualization capabilities complementing Red Hat's newly announced Linux Automation strategy. It offers the industry's broadest deployment ecosystem, covering stand-alone systems, virtualized systems, appliances and Web-scale 'cloud' computing environments.
Revolutionizing the Command Line with Hotwire
Submitted by
"Colin Walters of Red Hat chaired a FOSSCamp session about Hotwire, a unique and innovative graphical shell environment designed to improve the command-line user experience. I've been testing Hotwire releases for some time now, so the opportunity to see Walters present his invention in person seemed too good to pass up."
Red Hat Voices Concerns Over Microsoft Patent Model
While Red Hat welcomed Microsoft's recent decision to comply with the European Court of First Instance's antitrust ruling, Michael Cunningham, general counsel for Red Hat, stated that the company was still concerned about Microsoft's patent model. "We are reviewing the European Commission's announcement in the Microsoft abuse case and congratulate the Commission on the improvements announced," Cunningham said in a statement. "Our enthusiasm is somewhat tempered, however, by concerns that the patent arrangements may have not been made compatible with open-source licensing, especially given the pro-competitive effects to consumers of the open-source model."
Red Hat Global Desktop To Appear in November
"When Red Hat announced its upcoming Linux desktop at its annual summit in May, the company predicted the Red Hat Global Desktop would be out by September. Now, delayed a bit, the new desktop Linux will be appearing in November, company executives are saying. The delay was caused, Gerry Riveros, Red Hat senior product marketing manager for enterprise Linux, said in an exclusive interview with DesktopLinux.com, by Red Hat's desire to support Intel's full PC hardware platform lines."
Red Hat Calm in Face of Microsoft’s Renewed Patent Claims
Red Hat is taking a business-as-usual stance in the face of renewed rumblings from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer over the need for Red Hat Linux users to pay up. Ballmer has repeatedly claimed that Microsoft IP is found in Linux. "People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to eventually compensate us," said Ballmer at a Microsoft event last week in London. But Red Hat itself has adopted a stance that keeps it above the Microsoft patent fray. "At this point, please reference our previous statements on this topic," said a Red Hat spokesman contacted Tuesday about Microsoft's statements on Red Hat Linux users. The spokesman pointed out a Red Hat blog posted "after the last FUD statements from Microsoft" in May, she said. Shuttleworth agrees.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Driving Revenue, Profits Up
Global expansion and strong Enterprise Linux subscriptions have lifted Red Hat to double-digit growth as the CEO confirms Red Hat's solution and services provider transformation. Red Hat reported profit of USD 18.2 million, or USD 0.09 per diluted share, an increase of 64 per cent year on year for the second quarter of the company's fiscal year, which ended August 31.
Red Hat Global Desktop Delayed
Red Hat confirmed on Aug. 3 that it would be delaying the release of the newest member of its desktop Linux family, Red Hat Global Desktop, because the company is seeking to provide certain multimedia codecs. Sources close to Red Hat said obtaining some of these codecs was dependent on Red Hat coming to an agreement with Microsoft.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 Beta Released
"Red Hat is pleased to announce the availability of the beta
release of 5.1 (kernel-2.6.18-36.el5) for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 family of products. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 is still in development and therefore the contents of the media kit, the implemented features, and the supported configurations are subject to change before the release of the final product."
Matthew Szulik on Red Hat Culture, the Power of Open Source
"I spent an hour with Matthew Szulik this morning, wanting to get his input for my Open Source CEO Series. Matthew isn't the sort of person to seek the limelight for himself, so it was actually hard to convince him to answer questions. As became evident in his answers, though, Matthew firmly believes in the open-source model and the culture of personal excellence that makes it fruitful."
Interview: Brent Fox, Red Hat
"In Red Hat's case, support plays a central role in the company's business model and in its high ranking with customers. Brent Fox plays a central role in Red Hat's organization, helping to ensure the continued happiness of some of Red Hat's biggest customers. It's one of those jobs that doesn't get the attention it deserves... Until something goes wrong. The Open Road caught up with Brent to discover how support at Red Hat supports its customers, and how its model differs from that of other vendors."
Red Hat to MS: Let’s Talk Interoperability
Even though patent talks between Microsoft and Red Hat broke down last year before Microsoft went on to sign a technical collaboration and patent indemnity deal with Novell, Red Hat is still willing to work with the Redmond software maker on the interoperability front. But the Linux vendor wants to limit those talks to pure interoperability between Windows and Red Hat Linux, with the goal of solving real customer problems, Paul Cormier, Red Hat's executive vice president of engineering, told eWEEK.
Misconceptions About Red Hat’s Kernel Patches
"Talking with quite a few people at OLS last week, it seems there are still quite a few misconceptions about just how patched various kernels were throughout the history of Red Hat. One particularly egregious statement I heard was 'Early Red Hat kernels had ~2000 patches'. Here's some hard facts on exactly how many patches were in each release."
Red Hat, IBM Get Certified
Submitted by
"Red Hat and IBM recently announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 has earned the highest level of security certification achievable by commercial off-the-shelf operating systems. The certification is applicable when RHEL5 is running on IBM hardware, but all of the software is freely available, which may reduce the worries of customers regardless of which hardware they are considering running Linux on. The Fedora and CentOS distributions will immediately benefit, because they use the same software and SELinux policies, but other distributions can use the information as well."
More Details on Red Hat’s Global Desktop
"We now know more details about Red Hat's forthcoming Global Desktop, but there's still no download. In fact, the company doesn't plan to push this new Linux desktop online; instead, you're more likely to see it pre-installed on Intel's white box partners' PCs. Red Hat will be certifying Global Desktop for Intel's vPro PC architecture. The vPro is Intel's attempt to re-invent the business desktop."
Red Hat to Build a Virtual Appliance OS
Red Hat will use its annual summit to share its vision of a new paradigm for business PCs, which includes a partnership with Intel Corp. to deploy appliances in a virtual machine to bring enterprise-class management and security to the PC.
Red Hat Shows Its Global Desktop Cards
Red Hat announced a new client product, Red Hat Global Desktop, at its annual Red Hat Summit tradeshow in San Diego. This move is designed, in part, to compete with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Desktop, which has achieved success in business desktop markets, and with Ubuntu 7.04, which will soon appear on Dell PCs. Some reporting about this can also be found at the company's magazine. Update: Elsewhere, talking security with Red Hat's Mark Cox.
What’s New in SELinux for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5?
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"In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, 15 services in system space had confined SELinux domains defined. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, over 200 processes are confined by SELinux. The improved SELinux policy is much more precise in how it governs the operation of these services. It's far less likely that a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 system space process will be compromised or encounter an error caused by an SELinux policy not handling the specific requirements (e.g., file or directory access) of a service."
Red Hat 4.5 Boasts Enhanced Kernel, Clustering
"Red Hat today released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5, featuring a 2.6.9-55.EL kernel paravirtualized for i686 and x86_64 machines. RHEL 4.5 also provides NFS performance metrics and updated kernel support for Infiniband connectivity, according to the release announcement."