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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta

130 points| palebluedot | 12 years ago |access.redhat.com

103 comments

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[+] rdtsc|12 years ago|reply
This is very exciting. I know until it gets all the government certs and rubber stamps I won't be able to use it at work but if it is out the ball can start rolling as they say.

Here is the list of all the detail (tech notes):

https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_E...

You can see updated and deprecated packages as well as issues so far in beta.

[+] polvi|12 years ago|reply
Which certs are most important these days for govt use? Or does it depend on which department you're going for?
[+] pantalaimon|12 years ago|reply
I'm surprised by their removal of all these wifi drivers.
[+] Zoomla|12 years ago|reply
Does government certs mean backdoors?
[+] WestCoastJustin|12 years ago|reply
> Improved Application Performance and Isolation. Run applications in isolated and secure lightweight containers utilizing SELinux and resource management. Linux containers provide a method of isolating a process and simulating its environment inside a single host. It provides application sandboxing technology to run applications in a secure container environment, isolated from other applications running in the same host operating system environment. Linux containers are useful when multiple copies of an application or workload need to be run in isolation, but share environments and resources. [1]

Looks like there is a major shift in that they will support containers out of the box now. Hopefully we will see some type of GUI to create containers and manage cgroups. There has also been major effort assigned to getting containers working with OpenStack and Docker. You can manually download/compile LXC today, on RHEL 6.4, but it seems like a bit of a hack, since you need to figure out networking and LVM on your own, never mind building base container images. Should be interesting.

[1] https://access.redhat.com/site/sites/default/files/pages/att...

[+] andor|12 years ago|reply
Hopefully we will see some type of GUI to create containers and manage cgroups.

The GUI for libvirt is called virt-manager: http://virt-manager.org/

[+] nickstinemates|12 years ago|reply
There's significant effort underway in the Docker community to get libvirt as a viable execution engine for Docker. Very similar to how you can choose between AUFS and LVM.
[+] nailer|12 years ago|reply
Exactly - if they support and test LXC now, and the market demands Docker a year into the lifecycle (RH generally don't add features between major releases, so it'd have to be worth it for them), it's still doable as it's a userspace addition.
[+] 3am|12 years ago|reply
If you really need that much support tooling around lxc, why not go with OpenShift?
[+] sharprazor|12 years ago|reply
Sounds a lot like Solaris containers of a decade ago.
[+] keithpeter|12 years ago|reply
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 beta includes three desktops to match different work styles and preferences: GNOME 3, GNOME Classic, and KDE."

I know that RHEL is mainly used on servers, but this development looks significant to me. I look forward to an eventual CentOS 7 release with a choice of desktops.

[+] csmuk|12 years ago|reply
As someone who uses CentOS 6 on the desktop, people really should take a look at this.

For me, it's the only Linux desktop which I can find which is reliable and works out of the box with all my hardware.

[+] nailer|12 years ago|reply
> The Btrfs file system is now supported.

Nice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs#Features

[+] sciurus|12 years ago|reply
From the draft of the new storage administration guide:

Btrfs is still being actively evaluated for stability during the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 beta. The following target use cases will only be fully supported if it passes our tests: * The system partition only use case. This will allow btrfs only to get used for system installation, not only for a user's data. Currently it is unclear whether this will be restricted to this single disk or not. * Use btrfs for desktop and laptop users including their data partitions. * Use btrfs as the base file system under scale out "big data" file systems, such as gluster and Ceph.

https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_E...

[+] vondur|12 years ago|reply
Wow, XFS by default, is there any other distro that uses it by default? Makes me miss my old SGI machines...
[+] zx2c4|12 years ago|reply
I was struck by that too, and came here to make the same comment.

Why do you suppose they went with XFS? Ext4 seems like the defacto file system these days, but I know a lot of people seem to prefer XFS for one reason or another. It's a surprise to me that RHEL decided to default too it.

Anybody care to shed some light?

[+] Florin_Andrei|12 years ago|reply
I remember using XFS some years ago. It was blazing fast for anything involving large files.

It also had a bug, in that a power failure or kernel crash was liable to truncate some freshly-written open files to zero size. Anyone knows if this problem has been eliminated?

[+] chjohnst|12 years ago|reply
Not sure actually, pretty bold of RH but they have put a ton of dev time behind it with gluster so I guess it only makes sense.
[+] rch|12 years ago|reply
"All Java 7 packages (java-1.7.0-openjdk, java-1.7.0-oracle, java-1.7.0-ibm) in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 beta let you install multiple versions in parallel, similarly to the kernel."

This sounds pretty convenient to me.

[+] jlgaddis|12 years ago|reply
64-bit ISO: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/rhel/beta/7/x86_64/iso/rhel-everything-7.0-beta-1-x86_64-dvd.iso
[+] keithpeter|12 years ago|reply
Is this an 'open' beta or do you need a subscriber key? Just curious, I usually wait for CentOS for a desktop installation on a laptop
[+] jlgaddis|12 years ago|reply
I'm happy that MariaDB 5.5 is replacing MySQL but not so happy that Thunderbird is being removed in favor of Evolution.

XFS is the default filesystem.

"Multiple required authentications" in OpenSSH. Nifty.

[+] tirant|12 years ago|reply
For Desktop users (RHEL is also used in workstation environments):

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 beta includes three desktops to match different work styles and preferences: GNOME 3, GNOME Classic, and KDE"

[+] dschiptsov|12 years ago|reply
Fedora 18 is already matured?) Or it is based on outdated 17th?
[+] chjohnst|12 years ago|reply
Supposed to be based off F19, with full systemd support (just like fedora).
[+] jgillich|12 years ago|reply
At least the installer is a newer version, looks like it's from Fedora 19.
[+] Spiritus|12 years ago|reply
Anyone know which Python version will get bundled with RHEL 7?
[+] yxhuvud|12 years ago|reply
It says in the link, though I suppose it is only a beta still.
[+] ts4z|12 years ago|reply
Anybody know if they have the new C++ toolchain that will allow Chrome to start working again?
[+] diakritikal|12 years ago|reply
> systemd & OpenLMI

With the next SLES also going systemd by default, Do you think this will force the hand of the few holdouts left? Going I can't see vendors wanting to support all of systemd, upstart, sysvinit.

[+] thyrsus|12 years ago|reply
How long were the beta periods for RHEL 4, 5, 6? I know there's no commitment, but I'd like to tighten my vague idea of how long the beta period will be. Right now, I guess more than a day and less than a year.
[+] derekp7|12 years ago|reply
Typically about 6 months, judging from the press releases announcing the public betas of 4, 5, and 6, and comparing to the GA release dates.

RHEL 4 beta: Sep 27, 2004 / GA: Feb 15, 2005

RHEL 5 beta: Sep 7, 2006 / GA: Mar 15, 2007

RHEL 6 beta: Apr 21, 2010 / GA: Nov 9, 2010

[+] svennek|12 years ago|reply
Has anyone found the root password for the kvm qcow2?
[+] drinchev|12 years ago|reply
Can anyone explain a bit more about what happened to Red Hat? I'm about behind the history of this Distribution. Last time I read about it I found out that is paid and I never considered it, because of that. I'm using Slackware for most of my servers, but I don't know what is the target market or what is more special in Red Hat Enterprise.
[+] berkut|12 years ago|reply
Anyone know what version of gcc it'll ship with? Couldn't find that in the tech overview PDF...
[+] radoslawc|12 years ago|reply
I'm glad to see XFS got some love. Also PTP is nice feature.
[+] e40|12 years ago|reply
I'm glad I can stay on 6.x until all the kinks are worked out with systemd. I was on whatever Fedora made the switch to systemd and it was pretty painful.