Red Hat Announces RHEL 6.0

So, another full version number jump! Not those small “dot” releases! The BIG one! Sounds good…. but I will wait a bit for good ol’ CentOS!

Red Hat announces Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

“Red Hat announced today, November 10th, that long anticipated release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.

The announcement itself was anti-climatic. Everyone in Linux circles knew that RHEL 6 was coming. What I did find interesting–as customer after customer and partner after partner said how wonderful RHEL was and Red Hat Red Hat EVP Paul Cormier showed how the server operating system market has become a battle between RHEL and Windows-was how utterly mainstream Linux has become.

Solaris is done. The other versions of Unix now live in niches. The other Linux distributions, such as Novell’s SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) and feisty newcomers such as Ubuntu are fighting it out for second place.

Linux is no longer a revolution. It is no longer the outsider wanting into the business market. Linux, in particular, RHEL, is at business’ heart. As Cormier said, “It’s no longer about who has the newest kernel, our customers are beyond that.”

Exactly. I see Red Hat’s announcement as a graduation ceremony. Yes, the technology is important, but what’s even more important now is Red Hat, the business, Red Hat, the brand.

As for RHEL 6 itself, yes there are many advances. What I see as the big change here is that Red Hat is pushing RHEL not just as the standalone server operating system we’ve known it as for years, but as the business operating system for both virtualization and the cloud.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.