This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Red Hat Linux, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).
Red Hat Linux
Not to be confused with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
| Distribution of Linux | |
 | |
 | |
| Architecture | i386, DEC Alpha |
|---|---|
| Latest version | 9.0 |
| Initial release | 1994-10-31 |
| Package manager | RPM |
| Terminal shell | bash |
Red Hat Linux was a widely used Linux distribution developed by Red Hat, Inc. It was one of the first popular Linux distributions until its development was discontinued in 2003, with Red Hat Linux being succeeded by the commumity-focused Fedora and the enterpise-oriented Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Timeline[edit | edit source]
| Version | Type | Code name | Release date | Kernel version | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | test | Preview | 29 July 1994 | 1.1.18 (dev) | First test release, not publicly distributed, used RPP package manager. |
| 0.9 | beta | Halloween | 31 October 1994 | 1.0.9 (stable) 1.1.54 (dev) |
Purchased beta, came with documentation and graphical system management tools. |
| 1.0 | stable | Mother's Day | May 1995 | 1.2.8 | ACC Bookstores (Bob Young) bought out Red Hat Software, Inc. (Mark Ewing) and introduced the "Red Hat Commercial Linux" moniker. |
| 1.1 | bug fix | Mother's Day+0.1 | August 1995 | 1.2.11 1.2.13 |
Called "Mother's Day Plus One". |
| 2.0 | stable | — | 20 September 1995 | 1.2.13–2 | First stable RPM release. Started using the "Red Hat LiNUX" branding. |
| 2.1 | bug fix | Bluesky | 23 November 1995 | 1.2.13 (stable) 1.3.32 (dev) |
The first Alpha release (January 1996) was based on this version. |
| 3.0.3 | stable | Picasso | 1 May 1996 | 1.2.13 | First version to release multiple architectures (x86/ELF, Alpha/a.out) at the same time. Introduced the Metro-X server, glint graphical management tool for RPM, and graphical printer configuration. |
| 3.9 | beta | Rembrandt | July–August 1996 | 2.0 | RPM rewritten in C, introduced PAM, kernel modules instead of 72 different kernels. |
| 4.0 | stable | Colgate | 3 October 1996 | 2.0.18 | Added support for the SPARC architecture, ELF for Alpha. Introduced Shadowman™ logo, free electronic format documentation, Red Baron browser. |
| 4.1 | bug fix | Vanderbilt | 3 February 1997 | 2.0.27 | InfoWorld, Best of 1996, Operating Systems. |
| 4.2 | stable | Biltmore | 19 May 1997 | 2.0.30–2 | Shipped old libc 5.3 instead of buggy 5.4, avoided many issues this way but was widely criticized for it. |
| 4.8 | beta | Thunderbird | 27 August 1997 | ? | Introduced glibc 2.0. |
| 4.9 | beta | Mustang | 7 November 1997 | ? | Cemented the two-cycle beta release style, due to massive changes in C library version. |
| 5.0 | stable | Hurricane | 1 December 1997 | 2.0.32–2 | Introduced BRU2000-PE™ backup and Real Audio™ client and server. 1997 InfoWorld Product of the Year. |
| 5.1 | stable | Manhattan | 22 May 1998 | 2.0.34–0.6 | Introduced the Linux Applications CD, GNOME preview version (separate, not default), linuxconf, Netscape browser. Last release to use live filesystem off the CD. |
| 5.2 | stable | Apollo | 2 November 1998 | 2.0.36–0.7 | GNOME technology preview (separate, not default). |
| 5.9 | beta | Starbuck | 17 March 1999 | ? | |
| 6.0 | stable | Hedwig | 26 April 1999 | 2.2.5–15 | Introduced glibc 2.1, egcs, 2.2 kernel, integrated GNOME. |
| 6.0.50 | beta | Lorax | 6 September 1999 | ? | Introduced completely rewritten graphical installer (anaconda), with graphical mode and text mode implemented in Python. |
| 6.1 | stable | Cartman | 4 October 1999 | 2.2.12–20 | InfoWorld, 1999 Product of the Year, Operating Systems, multiple other awards. |
| 6.1.92 | beta | Piglet | 9 February 2000 | ? | |
| 6.2 | stable | Zoot | 3 April 2000 | 2.2.14–5.0 | First time to offer ISO images for FTP download. |
| 6.9.5 | beta | Pinstripe | 31 July 2000 | ? | |
| 7.0 | stable | Guinness | 25 September 2000 | 2.2.16–22 | First release to support Red Hat Network out of the box. Caused the gcc 2.96 flame war, leading to the 2.96RH name being used later. |
| 7.0.90 | beta | Fisher | 31 January 2001 | 2.4 | First release with 2.4 kernel. |
| 7.0.91 | beta | Wolverine | 21 February 2001 | ? | |
| 7.1 | stable | Seawolf | 16 April 2001 | 2.4.2–2 | First release to debut a new kernel stream out of the beta cycle. First release to simultaneously support all included languages. Introduced Mozilla browser. |
| 7.1.93 | beta | Roswell | 2 August 2001 | ? | ext3 becomes default, installer offers to convert ext2 filesystems. LILO replaced with Grub as default. |
| 7.2 | stable | Enigma | 22 October 2001 | 2.4.7–10 | GNOME 1.4, KDE 2.2. Would serve as development basis for RHEL 2.1 AS (Pensacola). |
| 7.2.91 | beta | Skipjack | 22 March 2002 | ? | Tried to ship a lot of new programs (gcc 3, GTK 2, Python 2), but decided to postpone them for 8.0. |
| 7.3 | stable | Valhalla | 6 May 2002 | 2.4.18–3 | Last release with the Netscape browser. |
| 7.3.29 | beta | Limbo | 4 July 2002 | ? | Tested 700MB ISO images but they proved problematic. |
| 8.0 | stable | Psyche | 30 September 2002 | 2.4.18–14 | gcc 3.2, glibc 2.3 RC, OpenOffice.org 1.0.1, GNOME 2, KDE 3.0.3. Introduced Bluecurve™ cross-environment unified look and feel. |
| 9.0 | stable | Shrike | 31 March 2003 | 2.4.20–8 | KDE 3.1 and GNOME 2.2. Introduced NPTL support with glibc 2.3.2 and kernel 2.4.20. Would serve as development basis for RHEL 3. |
| 9.0.93 | beta | Severn | 21 July 2003 | ? | Final RHL release. It would be merged with Fedora Linux to form release Fedora Core 1 test 2, version 0.94. |
