Red Hat pulls plugs on Red Hat Linux product line

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<font size="3">Red Hat pulls plugs on Red Hat Linux product line </font>

Red Hat yesterday unveiled its answer to the vexed question of what it should do about its consumer line - dump it. This is not quite how CEO Matthew Szulik put it to The Register over lunch yesterday, nor indeed did he say flat out 'oh, by the way, we're shooting the Red Hat Linux distribution when North Carolina wakes up, bye now,' but that is indeed what the company did.

Red Hat maintenance and support for Red Hat linux 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 will end as of 31st December 2003, and for Red Hat 9 as of 30th April 2004. "Red Hat does not plan to release another product in the Red Hat Linux line," says the 'you're fired' email sent out to The Register's Red Hat Network account yesterday. Red Hat Linux channels will remain open for six months after the product's end of life date, but no new errata will be posted after EOL, and no Red Hat Network support accounts could be bought or renewed as of yesterday. So it's very dead, very soon, and Red Hat is now about Red Hat Enterprise and... Fedora.

The move is a sensible one from the company's point of view because it provides a clear answer to the 'what do we do about the bit that doesn't work' question. It could perhaps have been done a little less brutally, and people who bought RH8 or RH9 both surely have good reason to be sore about how swiftly the support is vapourising (RH8 in particular - a year ago this looked like a product line with a future and a roadmap), but there really was no easy way to do it. A more honest way, probably...

View: The full story
News source: The Reg

 

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A very interesting article - thanks for posting this SimonV!

Would be interested in where this leads the Redhat Certs - posibly they have designed the certs to focus on the enterprise range already, Ive never really looking in deep at the certs offered by them.

I guess it was almost expected - the company has seemed to have grown out of what it used to be. Still quite a shock considering RedHat Linux's history.

Many friends who were RedHat die-hards a few years ago have switched to different distros. I have RH9 (Thanks Nelix) and will stil in stall it when I get a chance - I dont use Linux for much more than a firewall/router so updates do not much bother me.

Still, it does mean the next time I upgrade I will be looking for a new Linux! Or maybe I might just install 2k Server!!!

 

No kidding. All the work people have put into becoming a RHCE or RHCT and now RH is going away...They're gonna be hopping mad. On the other hand, RH distros will be selling cheap.

 

Thanks Si

So that are taking lessons from MS

 

We're running the new Enterprise Edition from Red Hat. It's smkoin'!! It doesn't bother me at all, that RH has dropped their single user "so to speak" attitude. If they're top survive and be proftiable, they had to. It;s not like you still can't get a free copy, because you can. You just won't unlock all the server end features, unless you buy a liscence. You can still request a cd, just no more ISO download.

But running Enterprise on my notebook...and I must day, RH has been keeping improvments out of previous releases waiting for this one. Don't fret Linux lovers, you can still grab Mandrake, and SUSE....

 

Az, how to you think SuSe being acquired by Novell will affect its single user market? Also, don't you consider Mandrake a bit "light" since it's rep says it's best used by the total Linux newbie? BTW, interesting avatar. Whatever happened to the beav, "bare butt"?

 

We are looking at the E edition at the moment :P