RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.5 Client

2010-07-10 von ekkehard.

For the first time in my life, I’ve purchased a RedHat subscription, to see what wonders and merits this system might bring compared to other Linux distributions. RHEL 5.5 might appear a bit dated at first, but everything makes a rock-solid impression, which is what you would expect from such a system. If you are a developer, make sure you purchase the Client + Workstation Option subscription or a similar one, to get access to the developer repositories. Of course, you might ask: Why pay for such a system, when all of the packages are free open-source software and available in other distributions also? The answer is: You don’t have to. You could pick a Fedora distribution, for instance, which has many of the merits of RHEL, but don’t cost a dime. RHEL is plain, simple, and rock solid. It doesn’t get many updates. In an enterprise environment, this might be exactly what you want. You can administrate your RHEL systems comfortably from the RedHat Network. It’s relatively easy to configure optional repositories for a machine, for instance, or manage your subscriptions and installed systems. The licensing scheme is pretty good and allows for reassignment of license entitlements. One notable advantage over other distros is the age of the kernel, which might have some disadvantages in some areas, but advantages in other areas. For instance, ATI drivers (from AMD) work on RHEL without a hitch. Many commercial software packages are available only for RHEL (and other commercial distros). If you want multimedia, you don’t have to use any gray-area plugins. Instead, you can purchase professional grade multimedia packages from Fluendo, for instance. Their GStreamer codec pack and DVD Player products work perfectly with RHEL, and enable playback of almost any multimedia file or DVD. Together with original packages from the usual suspects like Adobe et al, RHEL gives you systems you don’t have to worry about.

(p.s. for simple virtualization needs, you can use Oracle VirtualBox, especially if you don’t have a VT capable CPU).

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