Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is here!  Find out what's in this new release and how to install it here.

RHEL is a commercial distribution of Linux from Red Hat that provides a robust set of software that can both meet the demands of enterprise users while staying at the forefront of Linux and open source technology.  Red Hat has committed themselves to a distribution that will remain supported over a long period of time while providing timely updates and bug fixes.

ISU has purchased a campus site subscription for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The subscription provides access to RHEL for University owned systems and to personal systems owned by ISU students, faculty and staff. Computers owned and maintained by the university have access to either the Advanced Server (AS) or Workstation (WS) versions of the operating system. Personal systems owned by University students, faculty, and staff can be installed with RHEL WS.

A major benefit of this subscription includes access to the Red Hat Network (RHN) for automatic sofware updates and fine grain management of packages for individual machines. RHN also allows systems to be managed remotely either as a single computer or as part of a group of systems. All university and personal systems that utilize our subscription are managed through locally created accounts which are tied to this subscription.

Iowa State University has also purchased a proxy server which allows local caching of frequently requested updates to speed up network transfers of the updates.

For now, there is no cost to departments or personal users who wish to access the subscription though there might be a nominal fee required to cover the cost of creating RHEL installation CDs if users require them.