Red Hat Enterprise Linux

[Breen]

One of the reasons I like linux so much is that I can download a new distros whenever I want to try something new. One distro that I had never been able to try was Red Hat mostly because you have to buy support and I wasn't about to dish out that kind of cash just to try something out. What I realized is that you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of red hat (in my case, RHEL WS 4) which allows you to download the ISO files and have access to updates for the length of the trial. I had tried fedora before but after using red hat for a few days it's clear they have their differences. The first thing I noticed about red hat is that it is very fast even on old hardware (PII 400mhz, 256mb RAM). I started on Ubuntu and even though it's a great distro, it is also one of the slowest and most bloated-feeling distros (that I've used) especially on old hardware. Just moving the mouse on Ubuntu would spike the CPU usage to around 60%. For me this is not acceptable. I'm not sure why red hat is so much faster than Ubuntu but it is definitely noticeable. To end this rant, my only real question is when my 30-day trial of RHEL WS 4 runs out does the OS stop working (I'm thinking no on that one) or do you just lose the ability to receive updates?

[iccaros]

you have a few choices

1) you can renew support

2) you can point to CentOS or white Box and get updates (they build strait from the red Hat Source and just remove the Trademarked Red Had Logo's and art)

3) you can buy Support from Oracle

4) you can get the source RPMS from Red Hat and update your self.

http://www.centos.org/

http://whiteboxlinux.org/

it will not turn off..

also if you say your a collage student you can get Red Hat to renew your license for $50 a year. (no Commercial use though)

Edited January 11, 2007 by iccaros

[Breen]

Thanks iccaros