Red Hat Announces Release Date For RHEL 5

Commercial Linux vendor, Red Hat has confirmed that it will start shipping the next version of its Linux product from February 28, 2007.

Called Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5), the new version will feature major upgrades including high end virtualization capabilities. This will be facilitated by Xen virtualization software, which allows a single machine to run multiple operating systems simultaneously and increase system efficiency.

The new version will also include support for quad-core processors, better laptop support, and improvements to the SELinux security software, said Red Hat.

RHEL 5 is based on version 2.6.18 of the Linux kernel and the software includes new security features to protect against some attacks, plus a “technology preview” of Red Hat’s Stateless Linux software to let desktop machines pull data and settings from central servers.

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Despite announcing the release date, Red Hat didn’t disclose how much it’ll be charging RHEL 5. Market watchers say that Red Hat may put a competitive price and charge something similar to its rival Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.

It will also be interesting to see what Red Hat does for base server license pricing and whether it will charge for virtualized instances as well. Red Hat insinuated something to this effect earlier last year when it first started talking about RHEL 5.