was one of the most popular
Linux Distribution s, assembled by
Red Hat .
It is one of the "middle-aged"
Linux distributions; 1.0 was released in
November 3 ,
1994 . It is not as old as
Slackware , but certainly older than many other distributions. It was the first Linux distribution to use
RPM as its packaging format, and over time has served as the starting point for several other distributions, such as the desktop-oriented
Mandriva Linux (originally Red Hat Linux with
KDE ),
Yellow Dog Linux (which started from Red Hat Linux with
PowerPC support), and
ASPLinux (Red Hat Linux with better non-Latin character support).
Since
2003 , Red Hat has discontinued the Red Hat Linux line in favor of its new
Red Hat Enterprise Linux . Red Hat Linux 9, the final release, hit its official end-of-life on
April 30 ,
2004 , although the
Fedora Legacy project continues to publish updates.
Red Hat Linux is marketed primarily as a server operating system. It is also popular among companies running computing farms and the like as the built-in installation scripting tool "kickstart" enables fast configuring and set up of standardized hardware. From version 8.0, Red Hat has also targeted the corporate desktop.
Red Hat Linux is installed with a graphical installer called ''Anaconda'', intended to be easy to use for novices. It also has a built-in tool called ''Lokkit'' for configuring the
Firewall capabilities.
As of Red Hat Linux 8.0,
UTF-8 was enabled as the default font encoding for the system. This has little effect on
English -speaking users, but enabled much easier
Internationalisation and seamless support for multiple languages, including
Ideograph ic,
Bi-directional and
Complex Script languages along with European languages. However, this did cause some negative reactions among existing Western European users, whose legacy
ISO-8859 -based setups the change broke.
Version 8.0 was also the first to include the
Bluecurve Desktop Theme .
Red Hat Linux lacks many features due to possible
Copyright and
Patent problems. For example,
MP3 support is disabled in both
Rhythmbox and
XMMS ; instead, Red Hat recommends using
Ogg Vorbis , which has no patents. MP3 support, however, can be installed afterwards, although
Royalties are required in the
United States .
NTFS support is also missing, but can be freely installed as well.
See Also: Fedora Core
Red Hat Linux was originally developed exclusively inside Red Hat, with the only feedback from users coming through bug reports and contributions to the included software packages — not contributions to the distribution as such. This was changed late in
2003 when Red Hat Linux merged with the community-based
Fedora Linux project. The new plan is to draw most of the codebase from Fedora when creating new
Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions.
Fedora Core (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Fedora Linux) replaces the original Red Hat Linux download and retail version. The model is similar to the relationship between
Netscape Communicator and
Mozilla , or
StarOffice and
OpenOffice.org , although in this case the resulting commercial product is also fully
Free Software .
The official name of the Red Hat Linux distribution is (often abbreviated to '''RHL'''). This name is a conjunction of two pieces. The first piece '''Red Hat''' is that of the Red Hat software company. The second piece '''Linux''' refers to the underlying
Linux kernel written by
Linus Torvalds . RedHat, Redhat, RH, Redhat linux, RedHat linux, Redhat Linux, RedHat Linux are common, unofficial names for the software and are discouraged from use.
Some CD vendors offering Red Hat Linux call Red Hat Linux by other names in their advertising or catalogues because of the conditions placed over the trademark for Red Hat Linux. For example,
Lankum.com calls it ''You-Know-Who'' and
LinuxCD.org calls it ''Blue Jacket''.
Red Hat's trademark information page says that it does not want confusion to arise as a result of CD vendors using the Red Hat Linux name on redistributed copies of Red Hat Linux. Red Hat Linux, the official product, comes with technical support, and Red Hat does not want consumers to be mislead into thinking that Red Hat Linux CDs purchased from other vendors, is the same product as the official, i.e. that comes with support.
Release dates drawn from announcements on
comp.os.linux.announce . Version names are chosen as to be cognitively related to the previous release, yet not related in the same way as the release before that. [http://www.smoogespace.com/documents/behind_the_names.html]
- 1.0 (Mother's Day), November 3 1994 , $49.95
- 1.1 (Mother's Day+0.1), August 1 1995 , $39.95
- 2.0, September 20 1995
- 2.1, November 23 1995
- 3.0.3 (Picasso), May 1 1996 - first release supporting DEC Alpha
- 4.0 (Colgate), October 8 1996 - first release supporting Sparc
- 4.1 (Vanderbilt), February 3 1997
- 4.2 (Biltmore), May 19 1997
- 5.0 (Hurricane), December 1 1997
- 5.1 (Manhattan), May 22 1998
- 5.2 (Apollo), November 2 1998
- 6.0 (Hedwig), April 26 1999
- 6.1 (Cartman), October 4 1999
- 6.2 (Zoot), April 3 2000
- 7 (Guinness), September 25 2000 (this release is labeled "7" not "7.0")
- 7.1 (Seawolf), April 16 2001
- 7.2 (Enigma), October 22 2001
- 7.3 (Valhalla), May 6 2002
- 8.0 (Psyche), September 30 2002
- 9 (Shrike), March 31 2003 (this release is labeled "9" not "9.0")
The Fedora and Red Hat Projects merged
September 22 2003 .
