Red Hat Linux 6 review: Desktop performance par Ubuntu

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 was released as the most important update in nearly 3 years. The previous major version of Rhel 5, released in May 2007, uses the 2.6.18 kernel, although the incremental update adds many kernel updates and new features, but Rhel 5 is also beginning to age. However, we do not have to worry that Rhel 5 promises a 10-year maintenance period, which means that many of the new features introduced in Rhel 6 will also appear in the next 7 years of Rhel 5 updates, for example, on 64-bit platforms, RHEL can scale up to support 128 processor cores and 2TB main memory. Some people may find it strange, but think of Rhel 6 to support the 2020, you will be enlightened: Red hat This advanced technology research and development capabilities for RHEL injected fresh power.
The main goal of RHEL 6 is to make managing a virtual server as simple as managing a physical server, which means that a number of new features in that release are related to KVM, which means that Xen is officially disappearing from Rhel, but that's not surprising, because red Hat acquired Qumranet, the KVM parent company, back in 2008.
KVM-based virtualization already appeared in Rhel 5.5 and earlier, but Rhel 6 provides better performance and more hardware support, such as a virtual client that will have the SELinux sandbox feature, which allows clients to run in isolated environments, and new sandbox capabilities to better protect virtual Outside the machine, when you run non-trusted code on the virtual machine, it only affects the virtual machine.
more extensive disk format support
Another big change in Rhel 6 is the more diverse choice of disk formats, including native support for Ext4, to know that Enterprise Linux distributions like Rhel are very cautious about introducing new features, in fact Ext4 has become the default file system format for Rhel 6, so it is mature, We can use it with confidence. In addition to EXT4, the XFS file system is now supported.
In previous versions of Rhel, the Anaconda Installer provided a number of preconfigured packages, with options for the workstation version I used to test, the GNOME desktop, the minimized desktop, the Web development workstation, the software development workstation, and the lowest and most basic configuration.
from desktop to server
Although the Rhel desktop works well, it may not be the best option if you want to feel the latest gnome or Kde,rhel. Gnome 2.30 was released earlier this year, but Rhel 6 does not use this version by default, using Gnome 2.28, although technically, Rhel is not based on any Fedora version, but its desktop and Fedora 12 are very close.

▲ Figure 1 The newest gnome is not being reused here.
In addition, the common GNOME application is also lagging behind the current version, and Firefox stays in the 3.5,openoffice for 3.1,evolution with version 2.28.
In other GNOME packages, Red hat is still taking a conservative route, for example, IM software is still using pidgin, and in Fedora, Ubuntu and other desktop distributions have already used more feature-rich empathy, You will not find Shotwell Photo Manager, Gwibber microblogging clients and other very hot packages, which is also a major feature of Enterprise Linux distribution, more focus on stability, rather than the new features of the software.
It is worth mentioning that RHEL 6 contains the NVIDIA hardware drivers introduced in the new version of Fedora, so although the package system may lag a bit, the support for the graphics card is still on par with other distributions.
In terms of desktop performance, the latest Ubuntu and Fedora distributions will not be inferior, and even on some outdated hardware can run smoothly.
Rhel is still the most used on the server, the good news is that it integrates the lamp software stack, basically each package is the latest stable version, such as Perl 5.10,php 5.3,apache 2.2 and MySQL 5, and built-in support for the latest Ruby on Rails 3.0.
Python still stays in version 2.6, but the Python 3.x,fedora can be installed in parallel with the latest two versions, except that the server software stack and the Rhel desktop are basically updated to the latest version.
Red Hat's power-saving features in this release are also impressive, thanks in part to improvements in the kernel, more specifically for Rhel optimizations, and several important improvements in energy efficiency included in Rhel 5.4 and 5.5, which saves 25% more energy than earlier versions of 5.x. Let us most admire is, RHEL 6 on this basis further, the energy efficiency increased by 25%.
Savings in energy costs may not be obvious for small and medium-sized businesses and home users, but the cost savings for large data centers will be considerable, which is one of Red Hat's main target markets.
The system administrator can get some new management tools from Rhel 6, most notably the new system Security Service Daemon, DAEMON,SSSD, which provides centralized identity management capabilities, SSSD also provides credential caching for offline use, a feature that works well if you manage a large number of laptops that often leave the local network.
CentOS can be used as an alternative
Rhel is not for everyone, it is not free, but if you are looking for a stable, no frills desktop, then Rhel 6 is undoubtedly the best choice. But if you don't want to pay your support fee to Red Hat, CentOS may be your best bet, it's free, it doesn't make any difference in nature with Rhel, but CentOS usually lags behind Rhel for a month or two, which means that you want to use CentOS 6 and wait until early next year.
For Red Hat Enterprise users, upgrading to 6.0 is an important thing, especially for enterprise users who need virtualization and hardware support enhancements, although Rhel 5.5 has a long support cycle, but embracing the latest enterprise Linux distributions is undoubtedly the wish of many business users, and don't forget that Rhel 6 can be used until 2020.

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