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What Is Red Hat ( Linux )

2008-10-06T00:20:00.000-07:00

In computing, Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) is a company dedicated to free and open source software, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1995, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide.

Some users associate the company primarily with its enterprise operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux; others with the acquisition of open-source enterprise middleware vendor JBoss. Red Hat provides operating-system platforms along with middleware, applications, and management solutions, as well as support, training, and consulting services.

History

In 1993 Bob Young incorporated the ACC Corporation, a catalog business that sold Linux and UNIX software accessories. In 1994 Marc Ewing created his own Linux distribution, which he named Red Hat Linux. Ewing released it in October, and it became known as the Halloween release. Young bought Ewing's business in 1995, and the two merged to become Red Hat Software, with Young serving as CEO.

Red Hat went public on August 11, 1999, the eighth-biggest first-day gain in Wall Street history.[citation needed] Matthew Szulik succeeded Bob Young as CEO in November of that year.

On November 15, 1999, Red Hat acquired Cygnus Solutions. Cygnus provided commercial support for free software and housed maintainers of GNU software products such as the GNU Debugger and GNU binutils. One of the founders, Michael Tiemann, served as the chief technical officer of Red Hat and now serves as the vice president of open source affairs. Later Red Hat acquired WireSpeed, C2Net and Hell's Kitchen Systems.[citation needed]

In February 2000, InfoWorld awarded Red Hat with its fourth consecutive "Operating System Product of the Year" award for Red Hat Linux 6.1. Red Hat acquired Planning Technologies, Inc in 2001 and in 2004 AOL's iPlanet directory and certificate-server software.

The company moved its headquarters from Durham, NC, to N.C. State University's Centennial Campus in Raleigh, North Carolina in February 2002.

The following March Red Hat introduced the first enterprise-class Linux operating system [5]: Red Hat Advanced Server, later re-named Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Dell, IBM, HP and the Oracle Corporation announced their support of the platform.[citation needed]

In December 2005 CIO Insight magazine conducted its annual Vendor Value Survey, in which Red Hat ranked #1 in value for the second year in a row.[citation needed]

Red Hat stock became part of the NASDAQ-100 on December 19, 2005.

Red Hat acquired open-source middleware provider JBoss on June 5, 2006 and JBoss became a division of Red Hat. In 2007 Red Hat acquired MetaMatrix and made an agreement with Exadel to distribute its software.

On September 18, 2006, Red Hat released the Red Hat Application Stack, the first certified stack integrating JBoss technology.

On December 12, 2006, Red Hat moved from NASDAQ (RHAT) to the New York Stock Exchange (RHT).

On 2007-03-15 Red Hat released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and in June, they acquired Mobicents.

On 2008-03-13, Red Hat acquired Amentra, a provider of systems integration services for SOA, business process management, systems development and enterprise data solutions. Amentra operates as an independent Red Hat company.

Fedora Project

Main article: Fedora Project

Red Hat sponsors the Fedora Project, a community-supported open-source project which aims to promote the rapid progress of free and open-source software and content. Fedora makes rapid innovation possible using open processes and public forums.[citation needed]

The Fedora Project Board, which comprises community leaders and Red Hat members, leads the project and steers the direction of the project and of Fedora, the Linux distribution it develops. Red Hat employees work with the code alongside community members, and many Fedora Project innovations make their way into new releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Business model

Red Hat partly operates on a professional open-source business model based on open code, community development, professional quality-assurance services, and subscription-based customer support.

Developers take the open source Linux kernel and adapt and improve it to fit certain needs. They produce open-source code, so more programmers can make further adaptations and improvements. When a problem emerges, an entire community of users can come together to find a solution.

Red Hat sells subscriptions for the support, training, and integration services that help customers in using the open source software. Customers pay one set price for access to services such as Red Hat Network and up to 24x7 support, and they receive unlimited access to these services.

Programs and projects
One Laptop per Child
Red Hat engineers work with the One Laptop per Child initiative (a non-profit organization created by members of the MIT Media Lab) to design and produce an inexpensive laptop and provide every child in the world with access to open communication, open knowledge, and open learning. The XO-1 laptop, the latest machine of this project runs a slimmed-down version of Fedora as its operating system.

Mugshot

Red Hat sponsors Mugshot, an open project building "a live social experience" based around entertainment. It refocuses technological thinking from objects (files, folders, etc) to activities, like web browsing or music sharing.[citation needed] These topics form the focus of the first two features in Mugshot, Web Swarm and Music Radar. These had already started before the announcement of the project at the 2006 Red Hat Summit.

Dogtail

Dogtail, an open source automated GUI test framework initially developed by Red Hat, consists of free software released under the GPL and written in Python. It allows developers to build and test their applications. Red Hat announced the release of Dogtail at the 2006 Red Hat Summit.

Red Hat Magazine

Red Hat produces the Red Hat Magazine as an online news publication. It brings together issues of interest from inside and outside of the company, focusing on in-depth discussion of the development and application of open source technologies. It covers news from Red Hat and the Fedora Project, it updates readers on public licensing and the Creative Commons, and it features interviews with some industry leaders and open source people.

The company originally produced a newsletter called Under the Brim. Wide Open magazine first appeared in March 2004 as a means for Red Hat to share technical content with subscribers on a regular basis. Under the Brim and Wide Open magazine merged in November 2004 to become Red Hat Magazine.

Red Hat Exchange

In 2007 Red Hat announced that it had reached an agreement with major free software / open source (FOSS) companies that allowing it to make a distribution portal called Red Hat Exchange, which will resell FOSS software with the original branding intact.[7][not in citation given]

Competitors

Red Hat's main competitors include Sun Microsystems, Canonical Ltd., Mandriva, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle Corporation, IBM and Xandros.

Operating System (OS)

2008-10-05T01:50:00.000-07:00

An 'operating system' (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer. The operating system acts as a host for applications that are run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating system is to handle the details of the operation of the hardware. This relieves application programs from having to manage these details and makes it easier to write applications. Almost all computers, including handheld computers, desktop computers, supercomputers, and even video game consoles, use an operating system of some type. Some of the oldest models may however use an embedded operating system, that may be contained on a compact disk or other data storage device.

Operating systems offer a number of services to application programs and users. Applications access these services through application programming interfaces (APIs) or system calls. By invoking these interfaces, the application can request a service from the operating system, pass parameters, and receive the results of the operation. Users may also interact with the operating system with some kind a software user interface (UI) like typing commands by using command line interface (CLI) or using a graphical user interface (GUI, commonly pronounced “gooey”). For hand-held and desktop computers, the user interface is generally considered part of the operating system. On large multi-user systems like Unix and Unix-like systems, the user interface is generally implemented as an application program that runs outside the operating system. (Whether the user interface should be included as part of the operating system is a point of contention.)

Common contemporary operating systems include Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Solaris. Microsoft Windows has a significant majority of market share in the desktop and notebook computer markets, while servers generally run on Linux or other Unix-like systems. Embedded device markets are split amongst several operating systems

Computer Definition

2008-10-02T20:18:00.000-07:00

A computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions.

The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century (1940–1945), although the computer concept and various machines similar to computers existed earlier. Early electronic computers were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several hundred modern personal computers. Modern computers are based on tiny integrated circuits and are millions to billions of times more capable while occupying a fraction of the space. Today, simple computers may be made small enough to fit into a wristwatch and be powered from a watch battery. Personal computers, in various forms, are icons of the Information Age and are what most people think of as "a computer"; however, the most common form of computer in use today is the embedded computer. Embedded computers are small, simple devices that are used to control other devices — for example, they may be found in machines ranging from fighter aircraft to industrial robots, digital cameras, and children's toys.

The ability to store and execute lists of instructions called programs makes computers extremely versatile and distinguishes them from calculators. The Church–Turing thesis is a mathematical statement of this versatility: any computer with a certain minimum capability is, in principle, capable of performing the same tasks that any other computer can perform. Therefore, computers with capability and complexity ranging from that of a personal digital assistant to a supercomputer are all able to perform the same computational tasks given enough time and storage capacity.