Red Hat discontinues support for Linux 9

MUMABI: Now users and channel partners have been directed towards the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Platform. On contacting its Indian counterpart, head (alliances) Amit Boraskar confirmed the news saying, "The pace of development on Linux versions 7,8, 9 etc based on open source is real fast and more importantly, now customers 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, Boraskar was not negative on the company’s market share or penetration being affected. According to him, "It all 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 definitely provide a better platform to achieve such high goals. In fact, we are counting on the scalability of RHEL and endorsing this as a desktop strongly even in the SME and home user space. The 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."

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 of Red Hat whereas, Red Hat 9 was a version that could be downloaded and used freely. Now that it's officially the end of the line for version 9. Market insiders add that the decision to end support was something that all vendors have realized that needs to be done, in order to make Linux a viable operating platform within the enterprise. Both Red Hat and SUSE Linux Inc, which have 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.

One-year Web based support is provided on the RHEL platform and also extended professional services and consultancy. Presently, Red Hat has three value added distributors, which include Sonata, Integra and GT Enterprises in India. The vendor has 55 channel partners across the country.

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