Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 4 products, scheduled for
release early next year, will support five Indian languages,
reflecting the growing importance of the Indian market, according
to an executive of the Linux company.
"Enterprise Linux 4 will support 15 languages, and the five new
ones will be Indian languages," said Michael Ferris, product
manager for Red Hat's Enterprise Linux. "Our intent is to support
these [Indian] languages not only in the software, but to also
offer localised phone support in these languages."
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 products support 10 languages,
including traditional and simplified Chinese.
Red Hat sees a great opportunity in India for Linux desktop
deployments in education, e-governance, and small and medium-sized
enterprises, Ferris added.
Ferris was in Bangalore, for an Asia-Pacific regional tour by
Red Hat executives to brief the IT and business communities on
open-source software's benefits.
Red Hat also announced the availability of the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux Version 4 Beta 1, codenamed Nahant, and described
this public beta as a preview of the next generation of Red Hat's
suite of enterprise operating systems, including its desktop Linux
product.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 will be the first Red Hat Enterprise
Linux release based on the 2.6 version of the Linux kernel.
The current version 3 of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux products is
based on the 2.4 version of the Linux kernel. Although the 2.6
version of the Linux kernel has been available since last
December, Linux suppliers have been slow in bringing products to
market based on the new kernel.
"Our focus has always been to release technology that we believe
is enterprise quality and is ready to be adopted by customers,"
said Ferris, adding that Enterprise Linux 3 has features from the
2.6 version of the Linux kernel.
"Because of our close relationship with the open-source
community we watch what is happening in upstream versions of the
kernel," Ferris said.
Security is a primary focus of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 4,
which will include support for security-enhanced Linux (SELinux)
technology, Ferris said. Red Hat is working with the US National
Security Agency on SELinux, he added.
"We are building security into the platform, rather than merely
protect it with firewalls and other environments," Ferris said.
John Ribeiro writes for IDG News Service