[rhelv6-announce] Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 GA Announcement

Tue Jan 8 18:47:14 UTC 2013

Today, Red Hat announced the general availability of the next minor 
release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9.

We continue to work with our partners, customers and the open source 
community to deliver technology that is tested and stable – and Red Hat 
Enterprise 5.9 illustrates that ongoing commitment.  This release marks 
the beginning of Production Phase 2 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 
demonstrating the company's continued effort to promote stability and 
the preservation of customers' investments.  The Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux 10-year lifecycle provides stability for customers who wish to 
remain on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 until they are ready to migrate to 
a newer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux [1].

This release includes new functionality in the areas of virtualization, 
security, and networking; new support for standards and certifications; 
and enhancements to certificate-based Red Hat Subscription Management. 
New drivers for Microsoft Hyper-V enable customers to run Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux 5.9 as a virtual guest on Hyper-V with improved 
performance.  Also included in this release are additions to 
capabilities for developers as well as support for our hardware partners 
that take advantage of the latest performance enhancements.

Key functionality in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 includes:

Enhanced Hardware Enablement
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 showcases Red Hat's strong relationships 
with industry-leading hardware vendors. This minor release contains 
support for the latest CPU, chip set, and device driver enhancements 
from leading hardware vendors.

Continued Commitment to Security, Standards, and Certifications
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has always been built with security in mind – a 
commitment that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 helps solidify. This update 
features tighter security controls, the ability to verify and check the 
robustness of new passwords, and support for the latest government 
password policy requirements. It also adds support for using Federal 
Information Processing Standard (FIPS) mode with dmraid root devices. 
FIPS mode now supports RAID device discovery, RAID set activation, and 
the creation, removal, rebuilding, and displaying of properties.

New Developer Tools
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 includes several new developer-friendly 
features and tools, including the ability to develop and test with the 
latest version of open source Java available through OpenJDK 7. Many new 
SystemTap improvements have been added to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9, 
including compile-server and client support for IPv6 networks, smaller 
SystemTap files, faster compiles, and compile server support for 
multiple concurrent connections.

Enhanced Application Support
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 includes a new rsyslog5 package that 
upgrades rsyslog to major version 5. The rsyslog5 package runs faster 
and is more reliable than existing rsyslog packages. Samba has been 
updated to version 3.6. New features include fully featured SMB2 
support, a reworked print server, and security default improvements for 
all versions of Samba.

New Virtualization Capabilities and Flexibility in Multi-vendor Environments
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 enhances the operating system's usability 
in multi-vendor environments by introducing Microsoft Hyper-V drivers 
for improved performance.  This enhances the usability of Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux 5 for guests in a heterogeneous, multi-vendor 
virtualized environment and provides improved flexibility and 
interoperability for our customers.

Enhanced Red Hat Subscription Management
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 uses Red Hat Subscription Management as the 
default, allowing customers to effectively and more easily manage their 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions locally or with tools such as 
Subscription Asset Manager which was enhanced to easily run reports on 
subscription distribution and utilization and an improved user 
interface.  For more detail on how Red Hat customers can manage their 
subscriptions, please visit the Subscription Management section of the 
Red Hat Customer Portal.

Although Red Hat Enterprise Linux will remain stable with only bug and 
security fixes during Production Phase 2 of its life cycle [1], we 
encourage our Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 customers to consider upgrading 
to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 so they can take advantage of the latest 
features and hardware support available from our hardware partners.

We greatly appreciate the dedication and collaboration within the 
company and with our community and customers to develop and deliver the 
highest quality enterprise platform available today.

Sincerely,

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Team

[1] All details of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle and release 
schedules are available here: 
https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/

To read the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 press release with supporting 
customer quote, please visit:
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2013/1/red-hat-announces-general-availability-of-red-hat-enterprise-linux-5-9

To access and download an evaluation copy for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 
5.9, please visit: https://rhn.redhat.com/rhn/software/channels/All.do

Please note that this requires an active account on the Red Hat customer 
portal, and the user must filter and navigate to Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux 5 and the architecture of interest (e.g., x86_64, Power, System z, 
etc.).

For access to the documentation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 
including the release notes, please visit: 
https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/