[UCI-Linux] Red Hat Enterprise Linux for gratis

Steve Tsai stevet@uci.edu
Wed, 19 Nov 2003 00:11:55 -0800


I know that UC is working with RH to get a sitewide license.  But until
that happens, or if you want to run it at home, there's an alternative to
paying RH's retail prices.

White Box Linux[1] is a new project that builds RHEL source (available
under GPL) after removing RH's logos and trademarks to keep it legal.
>From their website...
> To provide an unencumbered RPM based Linux distribution that retains
> enough compatibility with Red Hat Linux to allow easy upgrades and to
> retain compatibility with their Errata srpms. Being based off of RHEL3
> means that a machine should be able to avoid the upgrade treadmill until
> Oct 2008 since RHEL promises Errata availability for five years from
> date of initial release and RHEL3 shipped in Oct 2003.

Note that this should not be used on any production machines since it's
still a pretty new project.  Only one maintainer, no bug tracking, no
mailing list so far.

Of course there's the other option of switching distros.

- Steve Tsai

[1] http://www.beau.org/~jmorris/linux/whitebox/