Red Hat Inc. released this week the first public beta of its forthcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, featuring scalability, clustering and security enhancements.
Red Hat, in Raleigh, N.C., first aimed for the enterprise with its mid-2002 Red Hat Linux Advanced Server release. The company later rebranded that product as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and built a portfolio around it, which now includes its high-end Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS, midrange Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES and desktop Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS.
All three are now on version 2.1, and will be moved simultaneously to version 3 in the late third or early fourth quarter of this year, according to a Red Hat spokesperson. Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS are included in the beta released this week.
The beta is the first Red Hat Enterprise Linux release to include the Eclipse developer environment, an open-source integration platform. Other new features include updated desktop applications, security and networking upgrades and enhancements, and a new graphical cluster configuration tool.
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Beta 1 is intended for testing in non-production environments.