Version 7 Linux

Posted Feb 13, 2026 20:00 UTC (Fri) by devnull13 (subscriber, #18626)
In reply to: Version 7 Linux by bof
Parent article: The first half of the 7.0 merge window

Red Hat did something similar. There was originally Red Hat 1-9, with the last release in 2003. Then they renamed it Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and restarted the numbering scheme with RHEL 2.1. RHEL 9 was released in 2022, 19 years later. (The current release number is 10.)

Version 7 Linux

Posted Feb 13, 2026 21:33 UTC (Fri) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (1 responses)

There was a bit more than just resetting the version number. Red Hat started in the days when Linux was mostly for individual users and maybe some small businesses, and the idea of an Enterprise distribution wasn't on anyone's mind. Over the course of time, they started to make real money charging for support contracts, but the standard Red Hat distribution was for everyone, home user and enterprise client alike.

When they created RHEL, it wasn't just a name change to give them an excuse to restart their numbering. It was mostly about formally splitting the Red Hat distribution into two tracks: a paid support RHEL version and a community supported Fedora version. You can reasonably claim that Fedora is as much a successor to Red Hat Linux as RHEL is. It really was a big change in the way everything was done, and I guess they decided it made more sense to restart numbering from 1 rather than having both RHEL and Fedora start at 10.

Version 7 Linux

Posted Feb 16, 2026 10:50 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Red Hat's more "stable releases" product offerings had already split off from RHL prior to Fedora Core. E.g., Red Hat Linux Advanced Server. RHL ostensibly still was the desktop product, but then even Red Hat's desktop customers (based on my experience from Sun and who they had as desktop customers, that would have largely been banks, trading companies and EDA firms) found RHL too fast moving, given that Red Hat then also created a RHEL Workstation edition. The next release after RHL 9 was then FC 1.

Version 7 Linux

Posted Feb 16, 2026 10:34 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

It wasn't Red Hat 1-9, it was "Red Hat Linux" (RHL). And RHL wasn't renamed to "Red Hat Enterprise Linux". RHEL started out as "Red Hat Advanced Server", and via few more rebrandings to "Red Hat Linux Enterprise Edition", as a more stable fork of RHL. E.g,, RHEE 6.2 was based off RHL 6.2 / 7, RHEL 2.1 from RHL 7.2.

RHL became Fedora Core Linux, not RHEL.