Substituting RHEL with Free Alternatives [LWN.net]

February 4, 2004

This article was contributed by Ladislav Bodnar

Ever since last year's announcement by Red Hat that it would discontinue its free Red Hat Linux, concentrating instead on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product line, a new breed of Linux distributions began to emerge. Since source RPM packages of all RHEL products are freely available on the company's FTP servers and mirrors, why not use them to build a complete RHEL clone? All that had to be done was remove trademarked logos and other references to Red Hat from the original source RPMs, then compile them into binary ones, and voilà - a new distribution is born. And because all Red Hat erratas and updates are also released in the form of source RPMs, keeping this new distribution up-to-date with security patches would be a simple matter of compiling the updated source RPMs and releasing them for download.

Indeed, several such projects have been born over the last few months. Although not all of them are completely free (beer), they all have one thing in common - they cost a lot less than the real RHEL. As such, they are more likely to attract small businesses and organizations that had standardized on Red Hat Linux before it was discontinued. What are their choices? Some of the projects that have built a complete Linux distribution from RHEL source RPM packages include CentOS, Lineox Enterprise Linux, Tao Linux and White Box Enterprise Linux.

White Box Enterprise Linux was the first officially released distribution built from RHEL's source RPMs. The project was initiated by a public library in Louisiana, USA and its motivation is best summed up by the representatives of the library itself:

We had several servers and over fifty workstations running Red Hat Linux and were left high and dry by their recent shift in business plan. Our choices were a difficult migration to another distribution or paying Red Hat an annual fee greater than the amortized value of our hardware. So we chose a third path, made possible by the power of Open Source.... White Box Linux.

White Box Enterprise Linux is completely free in both senses of the word. While the project lacks a flashy web site, all the most important pieces are present: basic documentation (including a tutorial on compiling source RPMs), highly active mailing lists, and most importantly, security updates via "yum" from several available mirrors. Version 3.0, code name "liberation", was released on December 15, 2003.

Tao Linux is another free RHEL clone. It was created for reasons not much different than those driving the White Box project - the attraction of having a well-built distribution running critical servers for years with very little maintenance beyond occasional security updates. The project also supports upgrades via "yum". The maintainer promises to provide free security and bug-fix updates for a period of at least 3 years, making them available within 72 hours after their upstream release by Red Hat. However, the author does not currently recommend Tao Linux to inexperienced users. Like White Box, the Tao Linux project provides detailed information about rebuilding Red Hat's source RPM, access to mailing lists and several download mirrors. Tao Linux Release One (code name "mooch") was released on December 16, 2003.

Lineox Enterprise Linux is a product of Lineox, Inc, a commercial company based in Finland. It was created from source RPMs used in RHEL's Advanced Server, Cluster Suite and Developer Suite. Unlike the previously mentioned offerings, Lineox goes a little further by providing upgrades with "apt" (and optionally Synaptic, a graphical user interface for "apt"), and it also offers some updated packages, such as OpenOffice 1.1 and Linux kernel 2.6. Currently all updates are available free of charge, although users will be required to pay a modest fee for the upgrade service once the introductory "free updates" period expires. The company promises to provide security and bug-fix updates within 12 hours after their official release by Red Hat.

CentOS is a product of cAos - Community Linux. CentOS-2 and CentOS-3 are what the developers call "sanitized rebuilds" of Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 and RHEL 3.0 respectively. According to the project's FAQ, CentOS is a stepping stone towards cAos, a more distinctive Linux distribution with many package updates. All of these projects are in various development stages, with CentOS-3 now at release "build5-rc1". While the distribution is available for free download, the project maintainers are considering several revenue generating models to pay for the cost of the development.

It is clear that the Open Source Software development model has created interesting opportunities not available in the world of proprietary software and there is no reason why we shouldn't take advantage of them. Of the four Red Hat Enterprise Linux clones, White Box Enterprise Linux is looking like the most promising effort, with a public sponsor behind it and many active users on the project's mailing lists. Tao Linux is another project worth considering.

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