* Red Hat poised to debut RHEL 4.0 on Valentine's Day
Linux leader Red Hat will finally debut a version of its Red Hat Linux Enterprise with full support of the 2.6 Linux kernel next month at LinuxWorld Expo in Boston.
Red Hat’s 2.6 kernel debut may be one LinuxWorld show behind Novell, which launched its 2.6-based SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 at the August LinuxWorld in San Francisco. But the software launch is probably more anticipated among Linux users, due to Red Hat’s huge installed base.
The new software will take advantage of improvements in the Linux 2.6 kernel that are aimed squarely at very large enterprise data center servers. RHEL 4.0 will have a completely rewritten I/O subsystem – the operating system mechanism for moving data among processors, memory and disks. This should improve Linux server performance on database and compute-intensive applications, such as number-crunching research software.
Another enhanced feature expected in the software is an improved Logical Volume Manager, which will allow RHEL servers to handle files larger than 1T byte. This allows Linux to compete with the most high-scale platforms for handling enormous databases and storage systems.
A third significant upgrade to RHEL 4.0 is the long-awaited inclusion of the SELinux code inside the software package. SELinux was developed by the U.S. National Security Agency as a secure computing platform. It allows Linux servers to run applications in strictly controlled containers, where one application is given minimal privileges to underlying Linux system configuration code. The software prevents such events as buffer overflows in one application to be used to hack other areas on the server, or to take control of the server itself.
Red Hat has not confirmed the release date of RHEL 4.0, but reports say it will debut on Valentine’s Day, the first day of LinuxWorld show in Boston.
