RedHat Linux and the Yale environment
Red Hat Linux has emerged as an industry standard and a full-fledged commercial product. There have been some recent changes in the pricing and distribution of Red Hat that will impact the Yale community of Linux users. This document outlines the current Red Hat product line, and provides a strategy for institutional implementation and support, as well as notes for the support of legacy versions of the Linux operating system on campus.
Support for older versions
The free community editions of RedHat, which include 7.x, 8.0, and 9, are no longer, or soon will no longer
be supported by RedHat. RedHat versions 6.x and older reached their end of
life cycles over a year ago. Company support for RedHat 7.x and 8.x ended in December 2003. The
support for RedHat 9 will end in April 2004. That leaves
basically two options for upgrade: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Fedora.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the newest commercial product release from Red Hat. It
is fully supported, meaning that patches and bug fixes will be distibuted over a three year life cycle. RPM updates are planned to extend to five years.
This product differs from the previous design philosophy of Red Hat - it does not include bleeding edge versions
of software. The Enterprise Linux line is also not a free product, but there is a substantial educational discount.
www.redhat.com/solutions/industries/education/products/
The yearly subscription fee for RHEL WS is $25. A yearly subscription to RHEL AS is $50. These fees will include permission to download the product, read errata and download RPM updates. It does NOT include phone or email support. You can purchase an individual yearly subscription from:
www.redhat.com/solutions/industries/education/indiv/ FedoraThe Fedora Project is an open source community project sponsored by RedHat that was developed to maintain the spirit of the former community editions. This is an effort to continue a free distribution that allows for development and enhancement over shorter time periods. You will get the most recent versions of software in the distribution, along with free updates and patches. The life cycle is however, six to twelve months. There is no phone or email support from RedHat. You can read more about the Fedora Project here: fedora.redhat.com/ YaleRPM support for Fedora and RHEL
WorkStation Support Services maintains a service called YaleRPM. This service provides local access to RPM updates on an automated basis. In order to use this service users need to provide proof of purchase for an RHEL license. Additional information on this service can be found at: wss.yale.edu/doco/yalerpm/ Support for legacy RedHat Linux distributions
The Fedora Project includes support for legacy RedHat Linux distributions (7.x and 8.0). They plan on adding support for RedHat 9 and Fedora Core 1 in April 2004 when those products reach their end of life. These legacy RedHat distributions RPMs will also be available using yalerpm. You can read more about the Fedora Legacy Project here: http://www.fedoralegacy.org/ Which Linux distribution is right for me?
Since RHEL has a longer life cycle than Fedora and has the full support of RedHat, it is better suited for server class machines or machines that can not have long periods of down time. The reasonable price and vendor support make it an attractive upgrade path for academic users. If you have a large number of machines, or find the latest versions of software desireable, Fedora is probably better suited for your needs. The current strategy for WSS is to use RHEL AS as the upgrade path on all server class machines. Fedora will be used on public cluster and recommended for individual desktop machines. If funding becomes available, we may consider moving desktop and cluster machines to RHEL WS.
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Certifying authority: Paul Gluhosky
Manager, AM&T Workstation Support Services URL: http://wss.yale.edu/doco/rhatyale04.html Last update: 02.17.04 |