The first version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to bear the name originally came onto the market as "Red Hat Linux Advanced Server". In 2003, Red Hat rebranded Red Hat Linux Advanced Server to "Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS"[6] and added two more variants, Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES and Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS.[7]
As Red Hat Enterprise Linux is heavily based onopen-source software and its source code is available to the public, it is used as the basis for severalthird-party derivatives, including the commercialOracle Linux and the community-supportedRocky Linux andAlmaLinux. Prior to June 2023, Red Hat published a sub-set of Red Hat Enterprise Linux's source code to the public in the form of modified build artifacts. Today, the complete source code for the major-version branch is available in the form of the CentOS Stream repositories.[8] Source code for other release branches remains available to customers in the form of unmodified build artifacts.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server subscription is available at no cost for development purposes.[9] Developers need to register for the Red Hat Developer Program and agree to its license terms. The free developer subscription was announced on March 31, 2016, and updated in January 2021 with less restrictive terms.[10]
There are also "Academic" editions of the Desktop and Server variants.[11] They are offered to schools and students, are less expensive, and are provided with Red Hat technical support as an optional extra. Web support based on the number of customer contacts can be purchased separately.
It is often assumed the branding ES, AS, and WS stand for "Entry-level Server",[12][13] "Advanced Server" and "Work Station", respectively.
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 there are new editions that substitute former Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS/ES/WS/Desktop:[14][15]
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform (former AS)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (former ES) (limited to two CPUs)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop with Workstation and Multi-OS option
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop with Workstation option (former WS)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop with Multi-OS option
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (former Desktop)
Red Hat had also announced its Red Hat Global Desktop Linux edition "foremerging markets".[16]
RHEL 4, 3, and prior releases had four variants:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS for mission-critical/enterprisecomputer systems.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES for supported network servers
Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS for technicalpower user enterprise desktops for high-performance computing
Red Hat Desktop for multiple deployments of single-user desktops for enterprises.
Fedora is a free distribution and community project and upstream for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Fedora is a general purpose system that gives Red Hat and the rest of its contributor community the chance to innovate rapidly with new technologies. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a commercial enterprise operating system and has its own set of test phases including alpha and beta releases which are separate and distinct from Fedora development.
Originally, Red Hat sold boxed versions of Red Hat Linux directly to consumers and business through phone support. TheFedora Project began in 2002 as a set of community supported packages for Red Hat Linux. However, the six month release cycle of Red Hat Linux was too disruptive for business users and Red Hat wanted a more reliable revenue stream. In 2002 Red Hat began releasing Red Hat Enterprise Linux based onRed Hat Linux, but with a much more conservative release cycle and a subscription based support program. A year later, Red Hat discontinued the Red Hat Linux product line, merging it with the Fedora community packages and releasing the resulting Fedora distribution for free.[18]
Fedora serves as the primary upstream for future major releases of RHEL: RHEL source code repositories are forked off the Fedora repository, and released after a substantial stabilization and quality assurance effort.[19] The major-version stable release branch is built and released by the CentOS project under the name CentOS Stream. Each minor version of RHEL is a branch of CentOS Stream that gets ongoing bug fixes and security updates.
For example, CentOS Stream 9 was forked from Fedora in March, 2021 (shortly before the Fedora 34 release) and available on public mirrors in September, 2021. RHEL 9.0 was released in May, 2022.
The Fedora Project lists the following lineages for older Red Hat Enterprise releases:[19]
Red Hat Linux 6.2/7 to Red Hat Linux Enterprise Edition 6.2E
Red Hat Linux 7.2, 7.2A to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1
Fedora 34 to CentOS Stream 9 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9[21]
Fedora 40 to CentOS Stream 10 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10[22]
In addition, the Fedora project publishes a set of packages for RHEL called theExtra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL). EPEL packages can be expected to work in RHEL, but it is up to willing community members to maintain the packages and back port any upstream changes. As such, packages "may come and go" during the ten-year lifespan of the RHEL release and Red Hat support plans do not include resolving issues caused by EPEL packages.[23]
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is derived fromfree andopen source software. Until 2015, Red Hat made the source code to its enterprise distribution publicly available through its FTP website, though the inclusion of Red Hat trademarks prevented direct redistribution of the software. In 2015, Red Hat began publishing de-branded source code via git repositories on git.centos.org.[24] Several groups used the source code to compile their own derivatives, typically with changes including the removal of any references to Red Hat's trademarks and pointing the update systems to non-Red Hat servers. Groups which have undertaken this includeAlmaLinux,CentOS,MIRACLE LINUX,Oracle Linux,CloudLinux OS,Rocky Linux,Scientific Linux,StartCom Enterprise Linux, Pie Box Enterprise Linux, X/OS, Lineox, andBull's XBAS for high-performance computing.[25][additional citation(s) needed]
In 2023, Red Hat replaced the process that published code to git.centos.org in favor of the CentOS Stream git repositories. As required by its open-source licenses, the code for branched releases remains available to customers and developers, but the customer contract allows Red Hat to drop any customer who provides third-parties with access to subscription services, discouraging them from publishing source code artifacts.[26][27] This led toAlmaLinux, one of the RHEL derivative Linux distributions, moving away from "1:1 bug for bug" compatibility to "application binary interface (ABI) compatible", whileOracle,SUSE, and CIQ (the company behindRocky Linux) collaborated to form the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA) in order to provide "open and free Enterprise Linux (EL) source code".[28][29]
Derivatives of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are free but do not get any commercial support or consulting services from Red Hat and lack software, hardware or security certifications from Red Hat. They also do not get access to Red Hat services likeRed Hat Network.
Unusually, Red Hat took steps toobfuscate their changes to the Linux kernel for RHEL 6.0 by not publicly providing thepatch files for their changes in the source tarball, and only releasing the finished product in source form. Speculation suggested that the move was made to affect Oracle's competing rebuild and support services, which further modifies the distribution. This practice however, still complies with theGNU GPL since source code is defined as "[the] preferred form of the work for making modifications to it", and the distribution still complies with this definition.[30] Red Hat'sCTO Brian Stevens later confirmed the change, stating that certain information (such as patch information) would now only be provided to paying customers to make the Red Hat product more competitive against the growing number of companies offering support for products based on RHEL. CentOS developers had no objections to the change since they do not make any changes to the kernel beyond what is provided by Red Hat.[31] Their competitor Oracle announced in November 2012 that they were releasing aRedPatch service, which allows public view of the RHEL kernel changes, broken down by patch.[32][33]
A number of commercial vendors use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a base for the operating system in their products. Two of the best known are the Console Operating System inVMware ESX Server andOracle Linux.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 beta was made available in December 2024. RHEL 10 was then expected to reach general availability in mid-2025.[35]
RHEL 10 was officially announced on May 20, 2025; 6 months ago (2025-05-20), at the Red Hat Summit,[36] and uses Linux kernel 6.12.0-55.9.1.el10_0. This release has the codenameCoughlan.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0, May 20, 2025; 6 months ago (2025-05-20)[37], uses Linux kernel 6.12.0-55.9.1.el10_0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 was announced at Red Hat Summit on May 10, 2022, and was officially released on May 17, 2022 (2022-05-17).[38] In this version of the system introduced a Linux Kernel 5.14.0 and Gnome 40.
RHEL 9 was the first to be based onCentOS Stream, itself based on Fedora Linux, while historically RHEL was based directly on Fedora Linux.[39]
The first beta for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (Plow), based onFedora Linux 34, was released on November 3, 2021.[40]
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (Plow) was released on May 18, 2022.[41] The namePlow was the Appalachian Trail nickname for Tim Burke, one of the founders of RHEL and retired leader of RHEL engineering.[42]
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0, May 17, 2022; 3 years ago (2022-05-17), uses Linux kernel 5.14.0-70.13.1.el9_0
9.1, November 15, 2022; 3 years ago (2022-11-15)
kernel 5.14.0-162.6.1.el9_1
9.2, May 10, 2023; 2 years ago (2023-05-10)
kernel 5.14.0-284.11.1.el9_2
9.3, November 7, 2023; 2 years ago (2023-11-07)
kernel 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3
9.4, April 30, 2024; 18 months ago (2024-04-30)
kernel 5.14.0-427.13.1.el9_4
9.5, November 13, 2024; 12 months ago (2024-11-13)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (Ootpa) is based onFedora 28, upstreamLinux kernel 4.18, GCC 8.2, glibc 2.28,systemd 239, GNOME 3.28, and the switch toWayland. The first beta was announced on November 14, 2018.[43] Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 was officially released on May 7, 2019 (2019-05-07).[44]
With Release 8 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, IBM has completed transition of POWER8 and POWER9 servers tolittle-endian mode.[45][46][47]
The nameOotpa was a tribute to Larry Troan. His son, Eric Troan was Red Hat's first head engineer and his username wasewt, so his father was given the nameewt's pa, pronouncedOotpa.[42]
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0, May 7, 2019; 6 years ago (2019-05-07), uses Linux kernel 4.18.0-80[44]
8.1, November 5, 2019; 6 years ago (2019-11-05), uses Linux kernel 4.18.0-147[48]
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (Maipo) is based onFedora 18 andFedora 19, upstreamLinux kernel 3.10,systemd 208 (updated to 219 in RHEL 7.2), and GNOME 3.8 (rebased to GNOME 3.28 in RHEL 7.6) The first beta was announced on 11 December 2013,[50][51] and a release candidate was made available on 15 April 2014.[52] On June 10, 2014 (2014-06-10) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 was officially released.[53]
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 (Maipo), June 9, 2014; 11 years ago (2014-06-09), uses Linux kernel 3.10.0-123
The life cycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is at least seven years for versions 3 and 4, and spans at least 10 years for versions 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. The life cycle comprises several phases of varying length with different degrees of support. During the first phase ("Production 1"), Red Hat provides full support and updates software and hardware drivers. In later phases ("Production 2" and "Production 3"), only security and other important fixes are provided and support for new hardware is gradually reduced.[68]
In the last years of the support lifecycle (after seven years for version 4 and earlier, and after 10 years for version 5 and later), critical and security-related fixes are only provided to customers who pay an additional subscription ("Extended Lifecycle Support Add-On") that is available for versions 3, 4, 5 and 6. This covers a limited number of packages.[69] Red Hat only supports major version upgrades from version 6 to version 7 and from version 7 to version 8.[70]
RHEL version
Last minor release
Release date
End of Full Support
End of Maintenance Support 1 (RHEL 5, 6, 7)
End of Maintenance Support (RHEL 8, 9, 10), Maintenance Support 2 (RHEL 5, 6, 7) (product retirement)
To maintain a stableapplication binary interface (ABI), Red Hat does not update the kernel version, but instead backports new features to the same kernel version with which a particular version of RHEL has been released. New features are backported throughout the Production 1 phase of the RHEL lifecycle.[76] Consequently, RHEL may use a Linux kernel with a dated version number, yet the kernel is up-to-date regarding not only security fixes, but also certain features.[77] One specific example is theSO_REUSEPORTsocket option which was added to Linux kernel 3.9, and was subsequently backported and became available since RHEL 6.5, which uses version 2.6.32 of the Linux kernel.[78][79][80]
The Extended Update Support (EUS) allows an organization / company to choose when they change to a new minor version. For the first 6 months of the EUS channel / yum repo, features may be added, but then the channel is locked down so that only bug and security fixes are patched. The organization / company then has 24 months to move to a new EUS branch. EUS allows the organization / company to stay on a minor version if required by a third-party application which is only tested with a particular minor version of RHEL, such asOracle Database,IBM Db2, IBM Cloud Orchestrator,Hortonworks. There may also be extra costs associated with using the EUS repos/channels depending on the agreement the organization / company has with Red Hat.[81] For more information on what is Included/Excluded from the EUS see.[81]
The EUS update mechanism for using older minor version branches is not available to CentOS, Oracle Linux and Scientific Linux, as Red Hat do not publish source packages for rebuilding.[82] As such, projects clearly state to ensure users run on the latest available minor version within a supported major release.
In general one can move from z streams to the next version of the z stream.
The 7.4.z EUS channel after the release of 7.4.
The 7.5.z EUS channel after the release of 7.5.
Any 7.y.z EUS channel where y is greater than 1.The standard base channel for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, which is the most recent minor release aka rhel 7Y where y is the latest greatest.
One can not go back in time, aka 7.5.z to 7.4.z and will NOT be supported.[81]
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (Ootpa) is based onFedora 28, upstreamLinux kernel 4.18,systemd 239, and GNOME 3.28. The first beta was announced on November 14, 2018.[43] Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 was officially released on May 7, 2019.[44]
For RHEL 8, the update schedule is approximately:[87]
8.0 - 6 Month Minor Release (kernel 4.18.0-80)[88]
1st Day of Support Window May 7, 2019; 6 years ago (2019-05-07)[88]
8.1 - 6 Month Minor Release with Extended Support and Update Services for SAP Solutions (kernel 4.18.0-147)[88]
1st Day of Support Window November 5, 2019; 6 years ago (2019-11-05)[88]
8.2 - 6 Month Minor Release with Extended Support and Update Services for SAP Solutions (kernel 4.18.0-193)[88]
1st Day of Support Window April 28, 2020; 5 years ago (2020-04-28)[88]
8.3 - 6 Month Minor Release (kernel 4.18.0-240)[88]
1st Day of Support Window November 3, 2020; 5 years ago (2020-11-03)[88]
8.4 - 6 Month Minor Release with Extended Support and Update Services for SAP Solutions (kernel 4.18.0-305)[88]
1st Day of Support Window May 18, 2021; 4 years ago (2021-05-18)[88]
8.5 - 6 Month Minor Release (kernel 4.18.0-348)[88]
1st Day of Support Window November 9, 2021; 4 years ago (2021-11-09)[88]
8.6 - 6 Month Minor Release with Extended Support and Update Services for SAP Solutions (kernel 4.18.0-372.9.1)[88]
1st Day of Support Window May 10, 2022; 3 years ago (2022-05-10)[88]
8.7 - 6 Month Minor Release (kernel 4.18.0-425.3.1)[88]
1st Day of Support Window November 9, 2022; 3 years ago (2022-11-09)[88]
8.8 - 6 Month Minor Release with Extended Support and Update Services for SAP Solutions (kernel 4.18.0-477.10.1.el8_8)[88]
1st Day of Support Window May 16, 2023; 2 years ago (2023-05-16)[88]
In addition to normal OS updates, RHEL 8 also maintains application streams to allow for certain applications to be supported and updated independent of the base OS and to match the maintenance stream of the application vendor.[89] Each application stream will be supported from two to five years with new versions only available during the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Full Support Phase.[90] These apps should be expected to be updated frequently with shorter lifecycles than the base OS packages.
This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(September 2022)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL 9) is a commercial open-source operating system developed byRed Hat for enterprise environments. It is built from the open-sourceFedora distribution and aims to provide a stable, secure, and enterprise-grade platform. RHEL 9, released in May 2022, introduces several new features and improvements, especially tailored for cloud-native development, security, automation, and performance enhancements.
Kernel and Performance RHEL 9 is based on theLinux kernel 5.14, offering improved performance and hardware support. It also features enhanced performance tuning tools for administrators to optimize workloads on modern architectures.
Security Enhancements RHEL 9 includes advanced security measures such as the Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA), which ensures system integrity. It also incorporatesOpenSSL 3.0 for updated cryptography and enhanced security policies. By default,SSH root password login is disabled to encourage the use of key-based authentication.SELinux continues to play a crucial role in enforcing strict security policies.
Automation and Management The integration withAnsible allows for more streamlined automation and configuration management across systems. TheCockpit web console has also been improved, offering new features for managing containers, networking, and storage.
Cloud and Container Support RHEL 9 is designed for cloud-native environments, with strong support for containers and hybrid cloud infrastructures. It is optimized to work seamlessly withRed Hat OpenShift, a Kubernetes-based platform, and supports containerization through tools likePodman. It also includes AppStreams, which provide curated packages for developers, ensuring access to the latest runtimes and frameworks.
Networking and Storage EnhancedNetworkManager features and support for NVMe over Fabrics improve performance and scalability for modern networking and storage configurations.
RHEL 9 is suitable for a wide range of enterprise applications across industries such as financial services, healthcare, and government. It is used in both on-premises and cloud environments, with strong support for multi-cloud and hybrid cloud deployments
RHEL 9 follows Red Hat's 10-year support lifecycle, which includes full support for the first five years, followed by maintenance support for the remaining five years.
^Miller, Matthew (23 April 2024)."Announcing Fedora Linux 40".Red Hat Blog. Red Hat.Archived from the original on 20 December 2024. Retrieved20 December 2024.
^"Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle".Red Hat Customer Portal. 2019-08-06. sec. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Application Streams Life Cycle".Archived from the original on 2013-01-20. Retrieved2019-08-06.
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