Red Hat Linux
Overview
Red Hat Linux was the dominant commercial Linux distribution through the late 1990s and early 2000s. Red Hat, Inc. played a huge role in bringing Linux to corporate environments and making it viable for servers and workstations alike. The Anaconda graphical installer was ahead of its time.
Red Hat also created the RPM package format, which became a standard adopted by many other distributions.
Key Facts
- Package format: RPM
- Default desktop: GNOME (or KDE)
- Installer: Anaconda (graphical & text modes)
- Admin tool: Linuxconf, system-config-* tools
- Website: www.redhat.com
Good For Newbies?
Yes — Red Hat has excellent documentation, a large community, and the Anaconda installer is user-friendly. It's also the distro most employers are likely to be running, so learning it has practical career value. Huge amount of HOW-TO documentation available online specifically for Red Hat.