This series takes a look at the people and planning that went into building and releasing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10. From the earliest conceptual stages to the launch at Red Hat Summit 2025, we’ll hear firsthand accounts of how RHEL 10 came into being.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
In our previous installment of the story of how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10 came to be, years of hard work arrived at the Red Hat Summit stage and the team shared what it felt like to watch the world react. In our final installment, the team reflects on how Red Hat comes together to support these efforts and planning for RHEL 11 begins.
Brian Stinson, principal software engineer
We as engineering couldn’t do our jobs without the rest of the company behind us. I’ve been here for 10 years, and we feel that support just sort of emanating throughout the whole company.
Stef Walter, senior director, Linux Engineering
One of the amazing things about working in the RHEL engineering team is the fact that lots of people are pulling in the same direction towards the same goal. So interacting with RHEL engineering is about sharing that goal. It’s about sharing that why, that mission.
Shelley Dunne, senior principal program manager
The trick is just by starting with ‘How can we help?’ I think that goes a long way.
Major Hayden, senior principal software engineer
Be curious. I don’t expect, for example, someone in finance to sit down and break out a copy of RHEL and try RHEL Lightspeed. However, if you can be inspired by some of the things that we’re doing. Say like, ‘Wow, we’re using LLMs to answer questions for customers. I wonder if we could somehow utilize some of that technology in finance so people could ask questions and learn more about that part of the business.’
Mike McGrath, vice president, Core Platforms Engineering
Our team is a very open team. We love it when people come and use RHEL. We love when you find something wrong that you let us know—or you can even fix it yourself, if you’re so inclined. The team lives and breathes in their open source communities, and so that’s our normal way of working.
Chris Wells, senior director, Product Marketing - RHEL Business Unit
Everyone should be able to tell the RHEL story. The RHEL story is the Red Hat story. Generally speaking, everybody that loves Red Hat, they love Red Hat because of the workplace culture that we have. That workplace culture, you can directly tie to open source. And I would say open source and Linux go hand in hand. You cannot separate the two of them. They are so deeply intertwined, and everyone should be able to tell that story.
McGrath
My biggest message to people would be: Come and use it. Use Fedora. Use CentOS Stream. Use RHEL. And if you’ve got ways to make it better, come get involved and let us know. We’re a very open team, and we welcome feedback from anywhere.
Gunnar Hellekson, vice president and general manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Reliably producing a product like this for over 20 years is an incredible achievement. It requires constantly learning, constantly changing, and always reinventing ourselves internally so we can produce a product that our customers look forward to using.
McGrath
RHEL 11 work has been going on, whether we’ve done anything or not, in the Fedora space. [As Summit 2025] It’s not in full swing yet. We’ve got to make sure RHEL 10 is a success and that people adopt it and use it. But we’ll be ready for RHEL 11 in 18 months when it really ramps up.
