RHEL is Free or not?

[hbisht]

Hi All,

Just want to know RHEL is free for use or not?

Harish

[peter]

It’s not free, you have to pay a license for support to use it. If you want a free version, try CentOS which is the same RedHat Enterprise code base with the proprietary parts removed.

[hysterik]

It is free to use, but if you want updates you have to pay for maintenance. It is very trivial to convert RHEL to CentOS, or vice-versa.

[jro]

It is free to use, but if you want updates you have to pay for maintenance. It is very trivial to convert RHEL to CentOS, or vice-versa.

Very true. Had RHEL with a support contract for a number of years, when I started correcting the Red Hat support engineers, I discontinued the contract. The support contract really didn’t provide much "support", and it was expensive too. I like Ubuntu Server, but their support contract prices are off the charts! Better to just keep your skills sharp and practice by ‘breaking’ test systems. 🙂

[andrew_nh]

When RedHat started charging for updates I switched to CentOS and never looked back. Their user forum is great and you can use any package built for RHEL even binary only drivers.

[KaranGhadge]

Very True Redhat is free .But if you want periodically updates you have to take license copy .Without license copy they will not publish any updates

[Kernel_Killer]

RHEL is far from free. There is a reason that RedHat altered the kernel, packages, and setup their way. From doing this, they get around the OSS licenses; allowing them to sell the product per se. The Fedora Project distribution is free, but if you read the fine print, it is only a dumbed down version of RHEL in beta; allowing them to have a plethora of free testers. By doing so, they can release their latest platform with the least amount of bugs.