[rhelv6-announce] Red Hat Announces Beta Availability of the Next Minor Release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (Santiago) announcement mailing-list rhelv6-announce at redhat.com
Fri Sep 21 18:59:16 UTC 2012


Red Hat is pleased to announce the availability of the beta of the next 
minor release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9.

The general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 will mark the 
end of Production Phase 1 of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 product Life 
Cycle.  The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 platform's 10-year Life Cycle 
enables customers with existing hardware and software investments to 
confidently and securely remain on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 until they 
are ready to migrate to a newer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux -- 
or until the conclusion of the product's Extended Life Phase[1].

Included in this minor release are a broad set of updates to existing 
features, including new functionality in the areas of virtualization and 
networking; new support for standards, certifications and security; and 
enhancements to certificate-based Red Hat Subscription Management. Also 
included are additions to capabilities for developers and support for 
some of the latest platforms from our hardware partners. With new 
drivers for Microsoft Hyper-V that have recently been accepted by the 
upstream Linux community, customers can now run Red Hat Enterprise Linux 
5.9 as a virtual guest on Hyper-V with improved performance.


Key functionality in the beta for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 includes:

Hardware Enablement
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 showcases Red Hat's strong relationships 
with industry-leading hardware vendors. This minor release contains 
support for the latest CPU, chip set, and device driver enhancements 
from leading hardware vendors.

Security, Standards, and Certifications
Security enhancements are fundamental to any Red Hat Enterprise Linux 
release. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 includes support for the latest 
U.S. government password policy requirements. This capability provides 
IT managers with tighter security controls and the ability to verify and 
check the robustness of any new password entered by a user.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 adds support for using FIPS (Federal 
Information Processing Standard) mode with dmraid root devices. FIPS 
mode now supports RAID device discovery, RAID set activation, and the 
creation, removal, rebuilding and displaying of properties.

Developer Tools
With the introduction of OpenJDK 7, customers can develop and test 
applications using the latest version of open source Java.

Many new SystemTap improvements first introduced in Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux 6.3 have been added to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9, including 
compile-server and client support for IPv6 networks, smaller SystemTap 
files, faster compiles, and compile server support for multiple 
concurrent connections.

Applications
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 includes a new rsyslog5 package that 
upgrades rsyslog to major version 5. The rsyslog5 package runs faster 
and is more reliable than existing rsyslog packages.
Samba has been updated to version 3.6. New features include fully 
featured SMB2 support, a reworked print server, and security default 
improvements for all versions of Samba.

Virtualization
Customers can easily run Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 as a guest on top 
of Microsoft Hyper-V, providing enhanced interoperability in a Windows 
environment. This enhances the usability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 
for guests in a heterogeneous, multi-vendor virtualized environment and 
provides improved flexibility and interoperability for our customers. 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 now includes the Microsoft Hyper-V Linux 
drivers, which were recently accepted by the upstream Linux community, 
improving the overall performance of Red Hat Enterprise  Linux 5 as a 
guest on Microsoft Hyper-V.

Red Hat Subscription Management
With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9, customers by default will use Red Hat 
Subscription Management as an enhanced subscription management 
capability using X.509 certificates. This will allow customers to 
effectively manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions locally and 
report on subscription distribution and utilization.  A number of Red 
Hat Subscription Manager improvements make migration from Red Hat 
Network (RHN) Classic to certificate-based Subscription Management 
easier. In addition, the Subscription Manager user interface is now 
easier to use and navigate.

To take full advantage of the latest features and hardware support 
available from the leading enterprise class platform, we encourage Red 
Hat Enterprise Linux 5 customers to consider upgrading to Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux 6.

We greatly appreciate the support we receive from our partners and 
customers who work closely with us to develop and deliver the highest 
quality open source enterprise platform available today.

Sincerely,

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Team

[1] Details of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle are available 
here: https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/

To read the Red Hat news blog, please visit:
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/archive/2012/9/red-hat-announces-beta-availability-for-next-minor-release-red-hat-enterprise-linux-5

To access and download an evaluation copy for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 
5.9, please visit: https://access.redhat.com/downloads/

For access to the documentation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 
including the release notes, please visit: 
https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/




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