RedHat, Inc., the leading Linux vendor, announced the
availability of RedHat Linux 7.3 earlier this week. The new
package looks very much like the latest Mandrake and SuSE Linux
releases in respect to the software included, save a few
surprises mentioned below. Interestingly enough, it seems that the most intriguing part
of the new release is not the distribution at all.
In an unprecedented move in the Linux distribution arena, RedHat 7.3 includes a competitive upgrade rebate. The rebate, which offers $10 off the standard edition or $20 off the professional edition, is available for users of the last two releases of the SuSE and Mandrake Linux distributions. This is a break from previous distribution promotions, which have generally avoided directly targeting users of other Linux packages. Whether this will signal the beginning of larger infighting between distributions is still unclear.
Moving back to the release itself, RedHat 7.3 includes all of the latest key packages including Linux 2.4.18, XFree86 4.2, and Gnome 1.4. RedHat also followed the somewhat criticized lead of SuSE and decided to include KDE 3.0 in the release.
Oddly enough, while RedHat went very cutting edge with packages such as XFree86 and KDE, other packages are left oddly outdated. The included Mozilla is behind by at least six minor releases (0.9.2 is included, whereas Mandrake includes 0.9.8), which is especially strange since RedHat has been a big proponent of Mozilla.
Update (May 10, 2002, 16:04 EDT): A reader wrote in to tell me the information on the Mozilla version that I had received from RedHat's web site was incorrect. Apparently Mozilla 0.9.9 is the actual version included.
Perhaps as a cost-cutting measure, the company also decided to include the aging StarOffice 5.2 instead of following Mandrake's lead and offering the commercial StarOffice 6 release. Still, we were puzzled about why the release does not seem to include OpenOffice.org, which is the open source base of StarOffice 6.
You can read more about what is new in RedHat Linux 7.3 at RedHat's web site, which includes a complete package listing and hardware compatiblity list. The release is available for download as three CD images, however download mirrors are still bogged down from initial demand.