Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 beta up for grabs

Red Hat has put out a beta for version 3 of its enterprise class operating system, offering up support for a host of processors.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 beta - aka Taroon - is available in two forms -- the AS version for servers and the WS version for workstations. The server version has support for quite a few processors, including Intel's 32bit and 64bit chips, AMD's x86-64bit Opteron, and IBM's Power processor. The workstation version does not run on Power, but IBM has largely pushed Linux - SuSE Linux at that - for server use.

Red Hat instructs users interested in the ES version for midrange servers to go ahead and test with the AS beta for the time being.

New features to the OS include a hyperthreading scheduler, support for IBM's Summit chipset, NFS improvements, loads of driver additions and better memory management. For a list of all the new features look here.

In general, the OS has been built to run better on much larger systems than those typically used for Linux, which is precisely what has SCO's panties in a bunch.

Red Hat has geared the follow on to Enterprise Linux 2.1 to run well on four processor and above machines. SCO claims to own the code that made this possible, while Linux advocates say SCO is trapped in an IP-laced hallucination.

All the necessary leads for downloads and bug reports can be found at the link provided above. Thanks to a generous Reg reader for passing the info along. ®