New Red Hat OS features modular design

The newly launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) operating system features a modular design that counters the argument by critics that operating systems are becoming too large and complex, a Red Hat executive said at launch ceremonies Wednesday in San Francisco.

Red Hat’s first new open source operating system in two years, RHEL5 was also formally unveiled at events in London, Singapore, and Hanover, Germany.

Critics say this is the beginning of the end of the OS. Billy Marshall, CEO of software vendor rPath, touts the software appliance alternative. Rather than buy a large operating system with unnecessary features, an rPath customer can buy a software platform that pairs the application with just enough OS code to make it run. Marshall described RHEL5 as “bloated,” similar to his assessment of the new Windows Vista OS from Microsoft.

But Paul Cormier, executive vice president of engineering for Red Hat, said RHEL5 lets customers load only the OS features they choose.

“We have built in a very modular fashion. You can load or install whatever you want,” Cormier said. “If you don’t want to install the DNS components, you don’t have to. We have been able to pull in storage components and management components if you so choose.”

With RHEL5, Red Hat eliminates the AS and ES designations for different levels of OS. Instead, there is RHEL5 and RHEL5 Advanced Platform. Customers who already use Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES can upgrade to RHEL5 at no change in their subscription price. Likewise, current users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS can upgrade to RHEL5 Advanced Platform at no change in subscription pricing.

RHEL5 includes a virtualization feature that allows the OS to run up to four guest environments, meaning that one copy of the OS could be run virtually on four other servers. RHEL5 Advanced Platform allows the user to run an unlimited number of virtual versions of the OS. Red Hat offers both server and storage virtualization, said Cormier.

RHEL5 is available now and is being loaded on servers as requested at companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems. Sun supports multiple OSs, even if they compete against Sun’s own Solaris 10 operating system.

“[Red Hat has] put some pretty good things in the OS, but a lot of them are things that we’ve had in Solaris for a very long time,” said Larry Wake, group manager in Solaris Software at Sun.

Red Hat also will launch a new partner program later this year called Red Hat Exchange that brings together key open source application software vendors whose products could be sold through the vendors or Red Hat.

“It brings open source providers together in one place with a standard subscription agreement and one throat to choke for support,” said Michael Evans, vice president of corporate development for Red Hat.

Among the open source vendors already signed up to join the Exchange are MySQL AB, a database provider; SugarCRM, which specializes in customer relationship management; and Zimbra for e-mail and other messaging systems.