Red Hat Releases

The following list includes full release versions, only. Typically, betas had their own names, different from that of the release that followed.

Red Hat Linux (RHL)

Version        Released     Name            Last Updated         "supported"
rhl-0.8        summer 94    Preview
rhl-0.9        31 Oct 94    Halloween
rhl-1.0        13 May 95    Mother's Day
rhl-1.1           Sum.95    Mother's Day+1
rhl-2.0           Fall95    (no name)
rhl-2.1         ? Oct 95    (no name)       >4 Oct 96            12 mo+
rhl-3.0.3      15 Mar 96    Picasso         >4 Oct 96             7 mo+
rhl-3.0.4       ? Aug 96    Rembrandt
rhl-4.0         3 Oct 96    Colgate          8 Aug 97            10 mo
rhl-4.1         3 Feb 97    Vanderbilt       8 Aug 97             6 mo
rhl-4.2        19 May 97    Biltmore        12 Apr 00            35 mo
rhl-5.0         1 Dec 97    Hurricane       16 Apr 99            16 mo
rhl-5.1        27 May 98    Manhattan       16 Apr 99            11 mo
rhl-5.2         2 Nov 98    Apollo          23 Oct 01            36 mo
rhl-6.0        27 Apr 99    Hedwig           2 Mar 01            22 mo
rhl-6.1         4 Oct 99    Cartman          2 Mar 01            18 mo
rhl-6.2        27 Mar 00    Zoot            31 Mar 03            36 mo
rhl-7.0        25 Sep 00    Guinness         2 Apr 03            30 mo
rhl-7.1        16 Apr 01    Seawolf         31 Dec 03            33 mo
rhl-7.2        22 Oct 01    Enigma          31 Dec 03            26 mo
rhl-7.3         6 May 02    Valhalla        31 Dec 03            20 mo
rhl-8          30 Sep 02    Psyche          31 Dec 03            15 mo
rhl-9           7 Apr 03    Shrike          30 Apr 04            13 mo

Red Hat Linux 9 was the end of the RHL product line.

The Two Newer Product Lines

RHEL (né RHAS):

RHL 6.2 was available (during 2000-2002) bundled with commercial support as "v. 6.2E", the company's first official enterprise offering.

In March 2002, a special edition of RHL 7.2 with added proprietary (mostly Java) packages and a bundled support/maintenance contract was released branded as "Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1" (code name Pensacola for the "AS" edition, and then Panama for the cheaper "ES" edition). With the end-of-life announcement for the traditional Red Hat Linux distribution, RHAS was rebranded in 2003 as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), had its proprietary software [1] packages removed after v. 2.1, and was offered at several different grades of support commmitment (not covered here).

Note that there was no RHEL/RHAS v. 1.x or 2.0 — at least not as publicly available software.

Version        Released     Name            Notes                  "supported"

rhel-2.1AS     26 Mar 02    Pensacola       Based on RHL 7.2        >= 5 years
rhel-2.1ES     26 Mar 02    Panama          Based on RHL 7.2
rhel-3         22 Oct 03    Taroon          Based on RHL 9          7 years
rhel-3-update1 16 Jan 04
rhel-3-update2 12 May 04
rhel-3-update3  3 Sep 04
rhel-3-update4 12 Dec 04
rhel-3 update5 18 May 05
rhel-3-update6 28 Sep 05
rhel-3-update7 17 Mar 06
rhel-3-update8 20 Jul 06
rhel-3-update9 15 Jun 07
rhel-4         15 Feb 05    Nahant          Based on Fedora Core 3  7 years
rhel-4-update1  8 Jun 05
rhel-4-update2  5 Oct 05
rhel-4-update3 12 Mar 06
rhel-4-update4 10 Aug 06
rhel-4-update5  1 May 07
rhel-4-update6 15 Nov 07
rhel-4-update7 21 Jul 08 (predicted release)

RHEL5 changed from the prior ES/AS/WS model to just Client and Server Editions: Server Edition is available either in the default Basic configuration (formerly "ES", and at the same price point) or with the Advanced Platform option (formerly "AS", and at the same price point; supplementing "Basic's" feature set with unlimited virtualisation, RH Cluster Suite, and the GFS cluster filesystem). Client Edition is available either in the default Desktop configuration (supports 1 physical CPU and 4 GB RAM) or with the Workstation option (supports 2 physical CPUs and unlimited RAM). Either of those two Client configurations can either have or omit the "Multi-OS option" (supports 4 virtualized guests/instances). Entering installation keys near the beginning of RHEL5 installation enables any options to which you have subscribed.

Version        Released     Name            Notes                  "supported"
rhel-5         14 Mar 07    Tikanga         Based on Fedora Core 6  7 years
rhel-5-update1  7 Nov 07
rhel-5-update2 21 May 08

Fedora:

Launched in 2003 as a replacement development platform for RHEL (and in that sense as the successor product to RHL 9), Fedora -- which was called Fedora Core through version 6 (when the Fedora Extras repository was merged into the Core package set) is community-supported and undergoes rapid development.

Version        Released     Name           Notes                     "supported"
fc-1            6 Nov 03    Yarrow         Based on RHL 9            n/a
fc-2           14 May 04    Tettnang       2.6 kernel, SELinux       n/a
fc-3            8 Nov 04    Heidelberg     Firefox, GRUB             n/a  
fc-4           13 Jun 05    Stentz         OO.o 2, Xen.  PPC support n/a
fc-5           20 Mar 06    Bordeaux       Mono, yum                 n/a
fc-6           24 Oct 06    Zod            Compiz, AIGLX             n/a
f-7            31 May 07    Moonshine      Merged in Extras repo     n/a
f-8             7 Nov 07    Werewolf       IcedTea Java              n/a
f-9            13 May 08    Sulphur        KDE4, OpenJDK, Firefox3   n/a

Red Hat Releases

Red Hat Linux (RHL)

The Two Newer Product Lines

See also: