RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux)

RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) is a commercially supported Linux distribution developed by Red Hat. It is designed for enterprise environments requiring stability, security, and long-term support.

Overview

RHEL is the commercial derivative of Fedora. It follows a conservative update policy, prioritizing stability and security over cutting-edge features. RHEL provides 10 years of support per major version and is widely used in enterprise data centers and cloud environments.

Key Features

  • 10-year support lifecycle per major release
  • Certified hardware and software compatibility
  • Advanced security: SELinux, FIPS 140-2, secure boot
  • Subscription management via Red Hat Satellite
  • Container and Kubernetes integration (OpenShift)
  • Free for up to 16 physical/virtual machines

Licensing

RHEL is a commercial, proprietary product. It requires a paid subscription for production use, support, and updates. The source code is available (based on Fedora), but the Red Hat trademarks and branding are proprietary.

Red Hat offers free developer subscriptions and limited free production use for small deployments.

See RHEL Subscription for details.

Official Resources