back to article Red Hat revs Enterprise Linux distro

Red Hat today announced the fourth release of its Enterprise Linux commercial distribution, RHEL 5.3, adding support for new hardware, some virtualization tweaks meant to keep pace with recent innovations to hypervisor technology, and all sorts of other goodies. RHEL 5.3 offers over 150 enhancements. A number of these features …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yawn.....................

    "That's as many threads as the biggest RISC/Unix SMP box offered at the turn of the millennium"

    Wow .. only 9 years behind .. well done Intel. And Sun have had 64 threads on a single CHIP for about a year now.

    Well I suppose the Intel box will double as a room heater.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    btrfs

    "BTRFS, which might see the light of day in 2010, was launched in June 2007"

    That's nonsense. There will be no production ready btrfs before 2013. Just look at how long it did take ZFS to be ready (started around 2000).

    Writing a new filesystem takes a very long time.

    The Linux guys should have implemented ZFS into the Kernel. CDDL does not forbid that.

    Soon Linux and Windows are the only major operating systems without ZFS. (Solaris, MacOS X, FreeBSD and NetBSD will all have it).

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @AC re Sun and 64 threads.

    Well done Sun then. Just a pity the performance is so crap. I've worked n Sun for twenty years but these days it gets killed on performance by Intel/AMD based systems.

    OK, you can run Solaris on AMD/Intel but sadly not many big companies do and yes the new chips Sun say they'll deliver this year sound good.... if they're not canned at the last minute!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nehalem

    mmmmmm, strokes lovely shiny server chips on desk. :)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    re: btrfs

    2013? Are you kidding? btrfs is in 2.6.29 which is now in its stabilisation phase. I would expect that btrfs will be fully supported sometime during the RHEL6 series, though I would be a little surprised if it was from the get-go.

    And it looks as though btrfs will knock the socks off zfs as well (flame bait :-)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    btrfs 2013

    Kidding?

    Not according to this page http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid39_gci1334319,00.html#

    It says 2012, but we all know how those things slip, especially with filesystems.

    And regarding ZFS, it's not standing still...

  7. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Happy

    RE: all the Sunshiners!

    Well, so much for Schwartz and his penguin suit, there's obviously still plenty of fear and bitterness in the Sun camp when it comes to RHEL. I'm not surprised - Sun have flip-flopped so many times on Linux the Sunshiners are just confused and afraid.

    RE: Yawn....

    Look, I know working with Slowaris tends to send you to sleep, but please try and stay awake and pay attention. Yes, we all know Niagara can run 64 weenie threads, the point is the four-socket Nehelem servers will run 64 real threads with a large application base already there for them. This means they will be able to run real enterprise applications like SAP, Oracle or MS SQL with real performance, unlike Niagara which is really only suited to webserving, and unlike Rock which will either be too expensive to compete or just remain vapourware.

    RE: btrfs

    "....Soon Linux and Windows are the only major operating systems without ZFS. (Solaris, MacOS X, FreeBSD and NetBSD will all have it)." Ah, you seem to have failed to grasp the concept of "enterprise", which is where the real major OS play and the money is at. Slowaris is barely enterprise anymore, it's losing the high-end share so fast. Mac OS is definately not enterprise, the only place it appears in business is in the crayon department. FreeBSD and NetBSD are both popular with techies but not there at the enterprise level, especially when compared to Red Hat or SuSE. And especially not compared to the real enterprise high-end choices, AIX or hp-ux, both of which (as far as I have been told) have zero plans for ZFS. So there seem to be plenty of "major OS" not interested in ZFS.

    And even if ZFS was worth looking at there is still the legal issue of the undecided lawsuit with NetApp and ZFS being a copy of WAFL. Red Hat and SuSE are being smart going with BTRFS over ZFS, because if NetApp win they lose nothing, and if Sun survive long enough to win then Red Hat and SuSE can just integrate ZFS later if it ever gets to the point where it's stable or better than BTRFS. Heck, if Sun win, since they've opensourced it, even hp and IBM can copy it into AIX and hp-ux if they ever get bored of working with Veritas. And Sun make zero return and will carry on losing market share. Face it, you Sunshiners scream and drool about ZFS like it's some magic cure-all that will make everyone love Slowaris and buy Sun, but the truth is it's just another sinkhole for Sun development money with very little return. Meanwhile, the Sun piggybank is getting lighter and lighter.....

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @ btrfs

    "That's nonsense. There will be no production ready btrfs before 2013. Just look at how long it did take ZFS to be ready (started around 2000)...Soon Linux and Windows are the only major operating systems without ZFS. (Solaris, MacOS X, FreeBSD and NetBSD will all have it)..."

    Agreed with everything in your post, bro :)

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