Relationship To Free and Community Distributions
Originally, Red Hat sold support for versions of Red Hat Linux (Red Hat Linux 6.2E was essentially a version of Red Hat Linux 6.2 with different support levels.) Starting with RHEL 2.1 AS in 2002, Red Hat sold their first version of RHEL. It was based on Red Hat Linux, but used a much more conservative release cycle. Later versions included technologies from the Red Hat sponsored Fedora community distribution project. Red Hat Enterprise Linux release schedules do not follow that of Fedora (around 6 months per release) but are more conservative (2 years or more).
Fedora serves as upstream for future versions of RHEL. RHEL trees are forked off the Fedora repository, and released after a substantial stabilization and quality assurance effort. For example, RHEL 6 was forked from Fedora at the end of 2009 (approximately at the time of the Fedora 12 release) and released more or less together with Fedora 14. By the time RHEL 6 was released, many features from Fedora 13 and 14 had already been backported into it. The Fedora Project lists the following lineages for older Red Hat Enterprise releases:
- Red Hat Linux 6.2 → Red Hat Linux 6.2E
- Red Hat Linux 7.2 → Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1
- Red Hat Linux 9 → Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
- Fedora Core 3 → Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
- Fedora Core 6 → Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
- Fedora 12, 13 → Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
In addition, the Fedora project includes Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL), a community-provided set of packages for RHEL going beyond the ones that Red Hat selected for inclusion in its supported distribution.
“Both Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are open source. Fedora is a free distribution and community project and upstream for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Fedora is a general purpose system that gives Red Hat and the rest of its contributor community the chance to innovate rapidly with new technologies. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a commercial enterprise operating system and has its own set of test phases including alpha and beta releases which are separate and distinct from Fedora development.”
Read more about this topic: Red Hat Enterprise Linux
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