SINGAPORE: The market leader in distribution of the Open Source Linux operating system for business has gone virtual. The new — fifth — release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, launched globally on Thursday, embraces the idea of having both servers and storage, think and act as if they are many separate units working together. For the first time, such ability to chalk out `virtual' territories within the same computing platform for different operating environments, had been built into the DNA of a Linux offering, Gery Messer, President, Red Hat Asia Pacific and Japan, said at the launch event here.

New features

With new beefed up security features, including tools for smart card verification and interfaces for ten Indian languages, Release 5 seems to ride the wave of new e-governance initiatives. "We are closely working with governments like Maharashtra, Goa, West Bengal and Uttaranchal and hope to partner with states like Kerala which have decided to adopt Open Source software to fuel government and educational applications,'' Nandu Pradhan, President and Managing Director of Red Hat India, said.

The new enterprise Liniux release is claimed to be `Web 2.0-ready,' an allusion to the next version of Internet which is expected to be largely browser-driven. The features would allow users to create smaller virtual machines within the same server — and they can be running Windows, Unix or other operating systems.

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