Linux vendor Red Hat updated its Red Hat Linux operating systems
for consumer PCs and for business workstations and servers.
Both operating systems use the Linux 2.4.7 kernel and the Gnome 1.4
desktop environment. The vendor also announced pricing for its
upcoming Red Hat Embedded Linux Developer Suite, starting at $2,500
(£1,760).
The Linux 2.4.7 kernel makes the open source operating system more
scalable by improving its performance in computers with more than
one processor, expanding its system memory up to 64Gbytes and using
Ext3 journalling and a logical volume manager to better manage
large file systems. It also has advanced power management features.
The 2.4 Linux kernel was released by Linux creator Linus Torvalds
in January.
The updated Red Hat Linux 7.2 comes with improved USB support, the
Gnome and KDE desktop environments, game demo software, a Nautilus
file manager from Eazel and a Mozilla Web browser. It also comes
bundled with Sun Microsystems' StarOffice 5.2 office applications,
and compilers for C, C++, Java, Python, Perl and PHP interpreters.
But the Gnome 1.4 open source desktop used by Red Hat is not
perfectly compatible with the version developed by open source
software vendor Ximian. Marty Wesley, a Red Hat product manager,
said: "We're both pulling from the Gnome base, but from a different
point in time." Ximian tends to use later versions of Gnome in
order to stay cutting edge, he added, while Red Hat works longer on
its Gnome products in order to improve stability.
Linux is not perceived to be as user-friendly as the Apple Computer
or Microsoft desktop environments, an issue the open source
community has tried to address with the Gnome project for an open
source desktop. Just as Red Hat banks on Linux, Ximian banks on
Gnome, producing its own flavour of the Linux-compatible
desktop.
As Red Hat's modifications to Gnome are published under the GNU
General Public License (GPL), the two versions will grow more
compatible. "Ximian tends to stay a little closer to the tip of the
tree... but all of these branches eventually fold back into the
trunk," said Wesley.
The updated operating system for business PCs and servers, called
Red Hat Linux Professional, comes with everything contained in the
consumer version, as well as Web server applications software,
application development tools, an e-commerce package and
workstation applications including Adobe Systems's Acrobat reader
and IBM's Java Run Time Environment. It also comes with system
administrator software and two months of support, along with a
six-month subscription to Red Hat Network Software Manager for one
system.
Red Hat plans to release an advanced server version of Red Hat
Linux 7.2 for data centre use within the next six months. The end
of 2001 will see the release of versions of Red Hat Linux 7.2 for
IBM's S/390 mainframe computers and for Intel's Itanium processor.
The company also reiterated its intent to release its developer
suite for embedded Linux, but did not give a release date.