Appendix C: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Features

Overview

With its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) commercial product line, Red Hat, Inc. is clearly positioning itself to go after customers looking to put Linux computing infrastructures in place. So, when you look at the differences between features in Fedora Core distributions and RHEL products, many features surrounding RHEL products are geared toward managing multiple desktop and server systems within a large organization.

Despite the fact that Red Hat is aimed primarily at customers who want to build large-scale Linux infrastructures, there are ways of starting with RHEL that require a much smaller investment. Later in this appendix, I describe how to get an evaluation copy of RHEL to try out that you can then upgrade to an affordable subscription program.

As of this writing, RHEL4 is the current version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Before launching into a discussion of RHEL4 features, however, I describe the upcoming RHEL5 release that is in beta testing at this moment.