1.1 Why Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora?

This book explains Release 3 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS and Release 1 of Fedora Core. As explained in the following sections, Red Hat offers several Linux products, or distributions as they're called. Moreover, other companies sell or freely provide Linux distributions. Why, then, does this book focus on Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS and Fedora Core?

From the standpoint of market share, Red Hat is the leading provider of Linux distributions in the U.S. and worldwide. To many people, Red Hat Linux is Linux. And, among the various Linux distributions provided by Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS and Fedora Core stand out as the most appropriate distributions for desktop users, especially those in corporate environments. To understand why this is so, it's necessary to understand more about Linux, operating systems, and open source (http://www.opensourece.org) software.