Unstoppable Linux: 3 things Red Hat Enterprise Linux has kept for 30 years

Thirty years ago on Halloween night, Red Hat revealed its very first release. Codenamed “Halloween” and officially named Red Hat Software (RHS) Linux, this early version was what would eventually become Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It included 223 packages on a CD-ROM, with over 400 additional software packages available over the old file transfer protocol (FTP). Its mission was to be the easiest Linux distribution to install and maintain. It included a prompt-based installer, nearly 200 pages of documentation, and 30 days of installation support. I’ve never installed the Halloween release, but I’ve installed as early as the 5.0 release and it often surprises me the consistent vision of Red Hat from the start.

Here are the top 3 things that Red Hat Enterprise Linux has done unwavering ever since its humble beginnings 3 decades ago.

1. Easy installation

Back in 1994, installing Linux meant searching for hardware that was supported by the 1.x Linux kernel, entering technical specifications of your CRT display into a complicated configuration file, and compiling a lot of software from source code. The Halloween release did a lot of work to improve the experience. It featured several kernel versions with a variety of configurations so that your hardware was recognized, and automated XFree86 configuration that at least got an image on your screen (some users likely had to edit a config file to get the best resolution). It might seem arcane today, but wrestling with drivers and peripherals was commonplace for any operating system in 1994, so it was a bold (and invariably appreciated) move for Red Hat to commit to automated configuration.

Red Hat has never faltered on providing a top-tier install experience. Whether you’re using the Anaconda installer to step through the process on a workstation, or using Red Hat Satellite to deploy RHEL on a fleet of servers, or just clicking a button to install RHEL on a managed cloud account, the install process is so simple that it rarely gets mentioned today. It’s easy enough that it’s effectively faded into the background for most users, new and experienced alike.

2. Lots of software

The press statement for the Halloween release contained this highlight:

“With the graphical Linux Installation Manager you can track every package installed on your system, and all packages available on the CD-ROM. You can examine package descriptions and file contents before you install them. With a few mouse button clicks you can install, uninstall, list and verify all installed packages.”

It was a real innovation, at that time, to have an “app store” interface that listed all installed and available applications. Today, RHEL still has a software manager to help you track what you’ve got installed, but that’s just the beginning. Software isn’t just for your local computer in 2024, so with Red Hat, you also get access to industry standard software for containers running both locally on RHEL and remotely on products like Red Hat OpenShift and RHEL AI.

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3. Red Hat for developers

The Halloween release of RHS was keenly aware of its primary audience. It was built for systems administrators, arguably the most obvious choice, but also for developers. Red Hat knew even then that once a system is up and running, it’s ultimately the developer tools that enable the system to be extended.

It’s simple to get started with software development when you have open source tools available. However, every developer knows that the tools you use are only part of the equation. There are languages to learn, libraries to link to, an array of frameworks and toolkits to choose, licenses to consider and more. Anything an operating system can do to make the job easier is always appreciated.

The press release for the Halloween release announced developer features that included a complete set of C and C++ compilers and libraries, along with some, possibly obscurer, languages like Common Lisp, Prolog, Scheme and Fortran. As quaint as some of those choices seem now, it was a big deal at the time and it shows how committed Red Hat was to enabling developers to write code suitable for enterprise use.

Today, Red Hat still ships C and C++ compilers and libraries (many of which have been developed continuously since even before 1994), and RHEL users have a lot more to choose from. Whether you’re writing apps for mobile devices, Java applications, websites or microservices running in containers in a multi-cluster cloud, the tools you need are provided by RHEL and other products like Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenStack.

Red Hat releases

Like the original RHS Halloween release, Red Hat releases today are a culmination of distributed development, rigorous testing and constant iteration. The release of RHS shows that since the very beginning, Red Hat has always adapted to changes in compute power and configurations. Back in 1994, the big features were automated installers and software development. Today, it’s cloud and application services, containers and virtualization, and advancements in AI.

Modern RHEL is still recognizable when compared to Red Hat’s initial software release because the foundational principles of how to build a robust operating system haven’t changed over the years. What has changed is what’s running software, how software is designed and delivered, and what kind of equipment performs the actual computing. And now, as then, you don’t have to think about those details yourself, because Red Hat has them built in.

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