Читать книгу Linux Bible - Christopher Negus - Страница 33

When Red Hat Linux appeared in the late 1990s, it quickly became the most popular Linux distribution for several reasons:

 RPM package management: Tarballs are fine for dropping software on your computer, but they don't work as well when you want to update, remove, or even find out about that software. Red Hat created the RPM packaging format so that a software package could contain not only the files to be shared but also information about the package version, who created it, which files were documentation or configuration files, and when it was created. By installing software packaged in RPM format, you could store that information about each software package in a local RPM database. It became easy to find what was installed, update it, or remove it.

 Simple installation: The Anaconda installer made it much simpler to install Linux. As a user, you could step through some simple questions, in most cases accepting defaults, to install Red Hat Linux.

 Graphical administration: Red Hat added simple graphical tools to configure printers, add users, set time and date, and do other basic administrative tasks. As a result, desktop users could use a Linux system without even having to run commands.

For years, Red Hat Linux was the preferred Linux distribution for both Linux professionals and enthusiasts. Red Hat, Inc., gave away the source code, as well as the compiled, ready-to-run versions of Red Hat Linux (referred to as the binaries). But as the needs of its Linux community users and big-ticket customers began to move further apart, Red Hat abandoned Red Hat Linux and began developing two operating systems instead: Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora.