"We are particularly interested in your feedback on the Xen technology," Red Hat said in an announcement of the beta software.
RHEL 5 is scheduled to arrive by the end of the year, but the company has begun leaving room for a delay into early 2007. "Our target is early winter," spokeswoman Leigh Day said.
And in an earlier interview, Chief Technology Officer Brian Stevens said Red Hat had decided to wait for Xen 3.0.3. "It's going to be on the edge," he said, referring to whether the company would release RHEL 5 the 2006 deadline.
The beta version also includes new diagnostic tools, SystemTap and Frysk, Red Hat said. SystemTap is similar to Sun Microsystems' DTrace, which enables administrators to probe systems, as they run, to scrutinize software for bottlenecks.
RHEL 5 also will include components designed to support a Red Hat technology called Stateless Linux, but the feature is labeled as only a "technology preview."
Stateless Linux converts servers or PCs into vessels that can be quickly reconfigured to perform different tasks. Settings and data would be stored in central repositories rather than permanently associated with particular computers.
Just a couple weeks ago Redhat's Brian Stevens ripped Xen and Novell. Now that Redhat got it's OS problems figured out (problems that it blamed on Xen)and released a beta, Xen is just peachy?
Web giant is spending $120 million to beef up its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, according to filings with the city reviewed by the San Jose Mercury News.
Tor's "obfsproxy" technology would make encrypted data look innocuous and let it dodge government censors. That could help citizens in Iran reach blocked sites as antigovernment protests reportedly loom.
MIT creates a simulation to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Spacewar. A relic of the early days of minicomputers, it was one of the first computer video games and set the stage for many others, including Asteroids.
And you label this "cautious"?