Red Hat ends support on Linux 9

Red Hat India has discontinued its support for Red Hat Linux 9 and earlier versions of Linux, as per its worldwide deadline of
April 30. Users and partners have been directed to move up to the Red Hat Enterprise
Linux Platform. Amit Boraskar, Head (Alliances) of Red Hat India confirmed the news saying,"The pace of development on Linux versions 7,8 and 9 is real
fast and. More importantly, customers now want a more secured environment.

Linux has become strong at the enterprise level and it is essential today that work is to be conducted seamlessly and hardware
also is to be certified. RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Level) certification is important for
enterprise networks and in these networks, technology enhancements also take place at a fast pace. Therefore, now these hindrances are overcome with the
certified versions. Customers from enterprise, SME and even home will be ready to pay for support as security is most
important today."

However, Amit was non-commital on this move affecting the company's marketshare in the country. He says, "It depends on
freedom of choice and customer perspective. Customers wanting a secured kernel will adapt to RHEL
and the newly launched Red Hat corporate desktop based on the same kernel. 

On market share, we haven't still touched the tip of the iceberg, therefore there is still a long way to go."

But now RHEL would provide a better platform to achieve these goals. It is counting on the scalability of RHEL and is
endorsing this as a desktop strongly even in the SME and home user space. 

"OEM vendors have already been upgraded on the RHEL platform, therefore home users would be targeted in this manner.

With the new RHEL and the Red Hat corporate desktop, we expect to target data centers to the desktop," claims
Amit.

With this announcement, it is clear now that Red Hat wants its users to move to Red Hat Enterprise, which is a fully
commercial licensed version whereas, Red Hat 9 could be downloaded and used freely.
Market insiders add that the decision to end support was something that all vendors have realized needs to be done, in order to make Linux a viable
operating platform within the enterprise. Both Red Hat and SUSE Linux Inc, which are major Linux distributions, now have a fully
commercial model.

On the user side, the announcement has caused a debate between those who buy into the open source model, versus the
commercialized Linux model, which tend to be developers or open source advocates versus business decision
makers, noted market insiders. There has been a perception that Red Hat has really needed to do something like this, as users have been
demanding from the vendor to provide visibility into their security plans going forward.

A one-year Web-based support is provided on the RHEL platform along with extended professional services and
consultancy. Presently, it has three value-added distributors--Sonata, Integra and GT Enterprises--in India. The
vendor has 55 channel partners across the country.

Nancy Sudheer

Mumbai