Red Hat Drops Free Linux
Customers asked to move to paid
Enterprise
Linux products.
David Legard, IDG News Service
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Prominent Linux vendor Red Hat is dropping its
free Linux product range and asking customers to migrate to its priced
Enterprise Linux, the company said Monday.
In a statement posted on its Web site,
Red Hat said it will end maintenance and errata support for Linux
versions 7.1 through 8.0 on December 31, 2003, and for the most recent
version 9 on April 30, 2004.
Red Hat Linux can still be downloaded free but
the boxed versions that were on sale for between $39.95 and $149.95 are
no longer available. No future versions will be developed, the company
said.
Red Hat has characterized its free Linux
product, which has been available since 1994, as "a general purpose,
low-cost solution that ... attempted to be all things to all people."
Certified Software
By contrast, Enterprise
Linux has been certified by a wide range of hardware and
application software vendors, Red Hat said.
The company is offering its users a choice
between two upgrade paths, either to the stable Enterprise Linux
product which starts at $179, or to its developer-oriented Fedora
Project, which is available as a free download.
The Enterprise Linux product comes in three
versions: AS for large corporate environments, ES for smaller offices,
and WS for workstation/desktop use. Each of these products is offered
in basic, standard, and premium editions depending on the level of
support required.
The basic edition of Enterprise Linux WS costs
$179, while the premium edition of AS for IBM zSeries and S/390 costs
$18,000, according to Red Hat.