Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 get another year of TLC (The Register) [LWN.net]

The Register reports that Red Hat has extended the support for RHEL. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions 4 and 5 are going to stick around in full support mode a full year longer. Red Hat outlined its complex release roadmap during the Red Hat Summit in Boston. It plans to extend the initial "intensive enablement" release phase of both RHEL versions 4 and 5 from three years of earnest support to an even four years."

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This means that RHEL 6 will be a long time coming

Posted Jun 19, 2008 22:51 UTC (Thu) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

As I mentioned in my Linuxfest Northwest 2008 report written at the end of April:

http://www.montanalinux.org/linuxfest-northwest-2008-scottsreport.html

"It was also guessed that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 might not come out for some time and that it would definitely not be based on Fedora 9... but probably Fedora 11, 12 or even 13. While that is a long time out it appears that Red Hat may be extending the support life cycle of RHEL 5 as a result."

Is it really a surprise that if RHEL6 is going to be delayed that they'd extend the life of RHEL5? I am a little surprised that they are extending RHEL4 though.

In other news today from the Red Hat Summit:

It was announced that the OpenJDK that ships with Fedora 9 passed the much sought after Sun Java compatibility test.

Red Hat released a product named Spacewalk (http://www.redhat.com/spacewalk/) - "Spacewalk is an open source (GPLv2) Linux systems management solution. It is the upstream community project from which the Red Hat Network Satellite product is derived." It appears it will allow you to manage CentOS and Fedora hosts but since the "content stream" of RHEL is not freely available (you can only get binary updated packages for RHEL from Red Hat Network), you can't manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems with it. That's ok. To me it seems that Red Hat is giving away the family jewels... and it sure will be nice to be able to setup your own RHN service and manage CentOS hosts with it. My guess is that this is a fork in the eye of Ubuntu Server.

There are quite a few other announcements (Red Hat Enterprise MRG V1, FreeIPA, etc) but those are the ones I care about the most.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 get another year of TLC (The Register)

Posted Jun 19, 2008 22:54 UTC (Thu) by dag- (subscriber, #30207) [Link]

I just blogged about it here:

    http://dag.wieers.com/blog/rhel-backported-one-additional...

And updated the CentOS lifecycle graph to visualize what that means for the continuity within
a company. My experience is that it matches much better with most companies' hardware
lifecycle as it offers more time to allow for mixed deployements of RHEL4 and RHEL5 (or RHEL5
and RHEL6 in the future).

Exciting times and interesting to watch how Novell and Canonical will respond and keep up with
Red Hat's pace...

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 get another year of TLC (The Register)

Posted Jun 20, 2008 11:37 UTC (Fri) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]

Given that Redhat just slowed down, keeping up is a no-brainer.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 get another year of TLC (The Register)

Posted Jun 20, 2008 22:34 UTC (Fri) by texastwister (subscriber, #7981) [Link]

Not as simple as that.  During the "full-support" period, updates can include "feature
enhancements" -- so it should not be assumed that RH will be standing still while waiting for
RHEL 6.  

But also, keep in mind, that in the enterprise space longer upgrade cycles are often seen as a
good thing, not a bad thing.

I think this will be well-recieved.  RHEL 5 still feels "fresh" and is a quite capable Server
OS.  It's only in the desktop / workstation space that it might be starting to get a little
stale.  But people who are determined to stay on the cutting edge aren't the ones who are
likely to buy from Red Hat. 

In the enterprise space, I expect purchasers to look for a matching response from Novell and
others -- so in a sense they will be expected to "keep up" with Red Hat's "slow down".

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 get another year of TLC (The Register)

Posted Jun 21, 2008 5:38 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

I donno about that either.

Redhat seems to be coming out with some fantastic stuff. They have their sattalite
configuration management system, oVirt virtualization system, and all sorts of stuff like
that. 
Switching to KVM is another good move on their part.