Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the dominant -- at least in the United States -- commercial Linux distribution, taking the place of UNIX in enterprise applications. It is produced by Red Hat Inc., one of the first commercial Linux vendors, which grew out of the Red Hat community project.

h Red Hat Inc. sponsors Fedora, the community developed Linux distribution, which it uses as a development test bed for RHEL. The company also supports various open source projects such as the GNOME desktop environment and is a major innovator in important Linux technologies supporting and instigating the development of such projects as systemd and Dracut, among others.

The distribution has a long and influential history since its inception as Red Hat Linux. It developed one of the most successful package formats and package manager, the RPM package format and the RPM package manager, originally standing for Red Hat Package Manager.