Vista Support Upped in Red Hat Ent. Linux

Datamation content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More .

Linux vendor Red Hat is updating its flagship Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to version 5.3 with added support for new Intel Nehalem hardware and including new Java, clustered file system and security tools.

RHEL 5.3 also adds improved support for Windows Vista interoperability, something that had been lacking from prior RHEL releases.

“Our minor releases are refreshes of the RHEL 5 release and contain mostly bug fixes and hardware enablement and to a certain degree also new software features,’ Daniel Riek Manager, Product Management, Red Hat Enterprise Linux told InternetNews.com.

“Instead of the old megahertz race vendors are now competing on the feature side again. As well raw bug fixing can also destabilize a system and customers prefer to get clear sync points for things that are not urgent security issues.”

One key issue that RHEL 5.3 addresses is Windows Vista interoperability. Red Hat has updated and improved the Samba (define), Linux to Window file sharing technology so that it will support Window Vista.

“We have seen demand for Vista compatibility in 2008 and it became a problem that we didn’t have really good support for,” Riek admitted. “We did some changes on the Samba side to get the new Vista enablement there we also did some work on CIFS (define) side so Linux can work as a client to Windows servers.”

Though Red Hat has improved interoperability from a file sharing point of view with Vista, access control issues still remain to be solved with Windows Server 2008. Among the key enhancements of Windows Server 2008 is Network Access Protection (NAP), which validates end point integrity and enables access.

Riek noted that RHEL does not currently support NAP though he noted Red Hat intends on providing an update on how and when they will support NAP in the RHEL 5.4 release in six months time.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.