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Revisiting RHEL Clones

Shortly after Red Hat split the freely available Red Hat Linux into a community-like Fedora Project and a high-end Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), a new breed of Linux distributions emerged - the clones of RHEL. With source packages for RHEL freely available on Red Hat's download servers, several user communities and small businesses started building what is essentially a re-packaged Red Hat Enterprise Linux - complete with security updates, but without the expensive support contract that comes with the real thing. We looked at the early attempts of some of these projects about a year ago. With the release of RHEL 4 earlier this year, this might be a good time to check how far they have progressed and what they are offering today.

If traffic on the CentOS mailing lists is anything to go by, then clearly, there is much demand for these distributions. The number of mailing list posts increased dramatically after the release of CentOS 4.0 and is now reaching the levels normally found only on those of major distributions; in contrast, Red Hat's own mailing lists see hardly any traffic. As one satisfied CentOS user put it, it is not just the cost factor that had attracted him to CentOS, but also the level of free community support available on the lists. Another reason why some users might prefer a RHEL clone over, say, Fedora is that Fedora is sometimes perceived as just a beta release of RHEL; in fact the developers of Lineox Enterprise Linux have noted that 87% of packages in Fedora Core 3 final were passed on to RHEL 4 Beta 2 without any modifications.

The above-mentioned CentOS distribution has now become a de facto standard among the RHEL clones. Although donations are encouraged, this is a pure community projects with no strings attached, and excellent infrastructure in terms of community support and download mirrors. More importantly, CentOS is building a complete set of releases for all architectures supported by RHEL (at the time of writing, i386, ia64 and x86_64 builds are completed, while ppc, s390 and s390x are expected to follow). CentOS is also the purest rebuild where the only modifications done to the original source packages were those that required the removal of Red Hat logos and trademarks. Security updates are handled by up2date and CentOS Networks. These tend to be released fairly promptly; checking the difference between the time a security update was announced by Red Hat and the time the said update was released by CentOS, we found that this process normally takes between 1 and 7 days.

Lineox Enterprise Linux is another popular RHEL clone. Built by a Finland-based company of the same name, Lineox is a commercial product which provides free CD/DVD ISO images for download, but charges a modest fee for security updates (€5 - 15 per system per year, depending on the number of systems). This seems to be a successful business model that might appeal to users willing to pay a small price in order to provide an incentive for the company to continue the update service. Lineox is extremely fast in building security updates - these are normally available within 24 hours after they are released upstream by Red Hat. The distribution has replaced the up2date infrastructure with apt and yum (with Synaptic and Yumex as their respective graphical front-ends) with apt being the preferred update method. Yum is only provided in the x86_64 edition - this is because apt does not work well with systems that contain a mix of 32-bit and 64-bit applications and libraries.

Scientific Linux is a relatively new entry among the RHEL clones. Developed by a collaborative effort at several universities in the United States, Switzerland and other countries, Scientific Linux is a free community project that not only rebuilds the source packages for RHEL, it also adds a handful of enhancements. Browsing through its download directory we spotted a few packages that are missing from RHEL, including the Pine mail client, XMMS with MP3 support, and OpenAFS - a distributed file system product which IBM has handed over to the open source community for development and maintenance. Security updates in Scientific Linux are provided reasonably fast, usually within a week of upstream updates. Scientific Linux 4.0 is currently in development - the i386 edition has reached a release candidate stage, while the x86_64 edition is in early alpha.

Tao Linux is another community project attempting to compile the RHEL source RPMs into installable CD and DVD images. Although not nearly as popular as CentOS, its mailing lists are reasonably busy and, like CentOS, it provides builds for all architectures supported by Red Hat. Security updates, handled via yum, are released extremely fast - often faster than those by CentOS. The i386 edition of Tao Linux 4 has been in beta testing for a couple of weeks, so it shouldn't be long before we see a final release. It is not clear whether the developers plan to provide version 4 for non-i386 architectures.

Pie Box Enterprise Linux is yet another RHEL clone. This is a commercial product by the UK-based PixExcel and not available for free download. Updates, charged at £15 per system per year, are provided via a custom edition of yum, which has to be downloaded separately. This product is similar to CentOS in that there are no modifications made to the original sources other than the removal of Red Hat logos and trademarks. At this time, only a i386 edition of Pie Box Enterprise Linux is available.

Other distributions that set out on the same path as the above five have yet to produce a new release based on RHEL 4. The best-known among them is White Box Enterprise Linux, the developers of which are reportedly working on version 4. The project's reputation has been somewhat tarnished by falling behind on providing security updates, although lately they seem to have improved in this department. There are several other projects that have released distributions based on RHEL 3, but no yet given an indication about their future plans. Nevertheless, both X/OS Linux and Fermi Linux continue to provide timely security updates for their existing products. In contrast, Eadem Enterprise Linux has fallen behind in recent months, while StartCom Enterprise Linux has not published any security updates since September last year.

Conclusion? If you are in this market, your best bet is probably CentOS or Scientific Linux, both of which are excellent, free community projects that are likely to be around for some time. Lineox and Tao Linux are very fast in terms of providing security updates, and could also be considered, but bear in mind that both are essentially "one-man" projects, which is not very reassuring when you have to rely on a single person to provide security updates for the next 5 years. Also, if Red Hat releases a new RHEL version every 18 months, with each of them having a life span of 5 years, it can be tedious for a single person to support so many different releases for several architectures. As for Pie Box, it is comparatively expensive since both the installation media and security updates require cash outlay. The remainder of the distributions listed above have not yet produced a new release based on RHEL 4, but both X/OS Linux and Fermi Linux continue supporting their older releases.

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New Releases

Mandrakelinux Clustering announced

Mandrakesoft has announced a new version of its "Mandrakelinux Clustering" offering. This release includes the 2.6 kernel, InfiniBand support, and a set of installation and administration tools. Base price is $2200.

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Gentoo Linux 2005.0 released

Gentoo Linux 2005.0 is out; click below for the announcement and pointers for downloads. "This release has had a few setbacks including a complete security rebuild, but with the help of the many teams within the Gentoo developer community, we believe that this release will be one of the best that we have ever had."

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LinspireLive! Five-0 Out

Linspire has released their free LiveCD edition through BitTorrent. This edition cannot be installed, but it is useful for rescue and demo purposes. Download it from here: linspire_live_5.0.69.torrent (646MB).

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Ubuntu 5.04 release candidate available

The first Ubuntu 5.04 ("Hoary Hedgehog") release candidate is available; this could be the last chance to test out Hoary before the final release, which is scheduled for next week. Click below for the details.

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Kubuntu Release Candidate

The Kubuntu 5.04 Release Candidate is now available. This is the last testing release before our first full release next week. Click below for details.

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Experimental UserLinux packages for Ubuntu

Benjamin Mako Hill has announced the availability of a set of UserLinux metapackages for Ubuntu Hoary. "Metapackages which means all they do is install other packages. UserLinux doesn't provide its users with separate packages of its own -- it uses whatever is in Debian. You can do now install these on on Ubuntu and get a sort of Ubuntu-flavored UserLinux."

Note also that the Ubuntu 5.04 ("Hoary") release candidate is expected to be released shortly.

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Debian-Installer rc3 released

The Debian Installer team has announced (click below) the third release candidate of the Debian Installer for Debian GNU/Linux Sarge. "We love doing this so much that we couldn't resist updating the installer one more time before the official release of Debian 3.1."

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Distribution News

Debian Project Leader Elections

David Schmitt has made available his summaries of questions posted to debian-vote, along with answers from the candidates.

Debian Project Secretary, Manoj Srivastava, has issued a second call for votes in the Debian Project Leader elections. " At the time of writing, half an hour into the second week of the vote, we have the lowest participation ever in a Debian project leader election seen so far (ever since we started tracking voting rates)." Votes must be received by April 10th.

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Slackware drops GNOME, restores Mozilla

The latest Slackware ChangeLog Notice (click below) contains a bit of a surprise: the Slackware distribution has dropped the GNOME desktop. "Please do not incorrectly interpret any of this as a slight against GNOME itself, which (although it does usually need to be fixed and polished beyond the way it ships from upstream more so than, say, KDE or XFce) is a decent desktop choice. So are a lot of others, but Slackware does not need to ship every choice." Also contained in the changelog is the return of the Mozilla browser.

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New Distributions

QiLinux

QiLinux is made in Italy, completely from scratch. The QiLinux staff has developed a desktop and live version as well as a server and advanced server version. QiLinux 1.2pre2 was released March 16, 2005, with a final 1.2 release expected in late April 2005.

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Distribution Newsletters

Debian Weekly News

The Debian Weekly News for March 29, 2005 is out. This week's edition looks at the addition of two developers to the ftpmaster team, Debian-Installer RC3, three new localisation lists (Arabic, Czech and Korean), and more.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of March 28, 2005 covers the release of Gentoo 2005.0, the return of Paypal, SSL support for Gentoo Bugzilla, and several other topics.

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Ubuntu Recent Community Council Meetings

The latest Ubuntu Community council meetings are available online in both summary and full log format. These meetings are dated March 8, 2005 and March 22, 2005. There is also a wiki page with an agenda for next meeting. Click below for the links.

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DistroWatch Weekly Issue 93

The DistroWatch Weekly for March 28, 2005 is out. "The delayed release of Gentoo Linux was the highlight of the otherwise very quiet Easter weekend. Elsewhere, future releases of Slackware Linux will no longer ship with the GNOME desktop and Mandrakesoft is once again implementing major changes to its release mechanism. Also in this issue - a couple of fun links for your entertainment, and no fewer than eight new Linux distributions on the waiting list. Enjoy!"

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Minor distribution updates

Puppy Linux

Puppy Linux v1.0.0 is out. "The big news item for this release is Scribus, version 1.2.1. This is the premier Linux desktop publishing application. It is really great and extremely easy to use. Of course, it is big, hence the size jump in the ISO files."

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Package updates

Fedora updates

Updates for Fedora Core 3: lsof-4.72-2.2 (fix a problem where "lsof -b" hangs), selinux-policy-targeted-1.17.30-2.90 (allow system_mail_t access to random_device_t), thunderbird-1.0.2-1.3.2 (bug fixes), spamassassin-3.0.2-0.fc3 (upstream bug fixes), sylpheed-1.0.4-0.fc3 (fixes another buffer overflow), libaio-0.3.103-5 (fixes the wrong SONAME problem), system-config-services-0.8.21-0.fc3.1 (fix typos and bugs), foomatic-3.0.2-13.3 (update to a newer version), initscripts-7.93.7- (bug fixes).

Updates for Fedora Core 2: mozilla-1.7.6-1.2.5 (removes FC3 dependencies), sylpheed-1.0.4-0.fc2 (fixes another buffer overflow).

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Miscellaneous Articles

The Big Arch Linux Interview (OSNews)

OSNews interviews the developers of Arch Linux. "What is the main reason that keeps you working on Arch with the same passion for years now? Judd Vinet: The thrill of creating something that other people use and like. I think that's the main motivation for me now. Arch has already reached a point of "best-suited distribution for me" so it's already fulfilled the goals set out when I started it. Now I find myself looking forward to adding features that other users will find helpful, and looking forward to working with other Archers. I'm truly proud of the calibre of our community and the way we've carved ourselves a little niche in the over-crowded distro contention."

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Distribution reviews

Linux in Government: Linux Desktop Reviews, Part III (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal looks at Red Hat's Desktop offering for business and government desktops. "Prior to using Red Hat's Enterprise Linux desktop, I gave Sun's Java Desktop System my highest rating for look and feel, ease of use and administration. As of this writing, Red Hat has pulled ahead as the "best of class" desktop. One example of why RHEL took the lead can be seen in Figure 2; here, you can see that Red Hat greatly simplified its launch menu and improved its desktop rendering. Even compared with Fedora's design and the last RH public version, RH 9, the menu system has become easier to use and the graphical presentation has improved."

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My workstation OS: PCLinuxOS Preview 8 (NewsForge)

NewsForge has a mini-review of PCLinuxOS Preview 8. "PCLinuxOS may be the best Linux distro available for home use. It's handsome, thoughtfully integrated, easily accessible to newcomers, and stable. It's hard to imagine a better introduction to Linux. Texstar is targeting the release of version 1 for later this year, but it's already light years ahead of the competition. P8 is my desktop of choice."

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