Free linux OS

[skumar704]

Hi,

Would like to know what all OS of Linux are freeely distributed.Curious to know if red hat linux9 is also avialble freely?

Thanks in Advance.
Reg,
Sushil

[Roxoff]

Before I start, I'd like to just point out that RedHat 9 is fully open source, but was created around the same time as Windwos 98 and 2000. It's well out of date. The history is that after 9.0 RedHat produced a corporate server, RedHat Enterprise (also known as RHEL) and Fedora Core (now, just Fedora). Both these are open source, but the corporate one comes with a subscription to a support service. There are free versions of RHEL, most notably CentOS, who re-badge and distribute RHEL without the support contract and hence provide a server grade OS for free, something that's really useful to the non-corporate world.

There is a difference between free of cost to get hold of and use (free as in beer), and free and unfettered, open to adaptation and totally modifyable and customisable (free as in liberty).

Yes, Linux is available without financial cost for most distributions, but all Linux distributions are made truly free by the Gnu license (GPL).

The GPL ensures that you have full control over the code in your posession, you can modify it and adapt it to fit your needs. You don't have to make your changes available to anyone, but if you do the license obliges you to make your source code available too.

[meton_magis]

There are free versions of RHEL, most notably CentOS, who re-badge and distribute RHEL without the support contract and hence provide a server grade OS for free, something that's really useful to the non-corporate world.

It's REALLY good in the corporate world too, it can make you look good if you show a way to get a stable environment for a low upkeep application that costs nothing more than the hardware and time.


....... but that's not the point of this thread .....so ........ Hi.

[Roxoff]

....... but that's not the point of this thread .....so ........ Hi.

Yeah, I found it really hard to keep my answer short, I could go on for hours about this subject