The Raleigh, North Carolina-based Linux vendor has always had the open source nature of Linux to differentiate its operating system from Unix, but with the impending release of Sun’s Open Solaris, Red Hat is taking the opportunity to target the installed Solaris user base.

Version 4 we see as the end of the proprietary model, with a clear aim at Unix and particularly Sun Solaris, said Werner Knoblich, vice president of EMEA at Red Hat. There is no reason left to stick with existing proprietary platforms.

Santa Clara, California-based Sun has been waging a marketing war against Red Hat in recent months, with Sun’s president, Jonathan Schwartz, calling Red Hat a proprietary Linux in January.

Knoblich denied that Red Hat was engaging in a tit-for-tat campaign, maintaining the focus on Sun was about driving revenue from Unix replacements in its core vertical targets; financial services and telecommunications.

From a business perspective, where will I make the majority of my revenue? It clearly will be Unix replacement, he said. Sun has the biggest installed base, and is the strongest in these two verticals.

While Sun is taking its Unix operating system open source via the OpenSolaris project, Knoblich maintained that Sun has to do more than just release the code under an open source license.

Open source is not just the bits and bytes, it’s the total of everything, he said. How does it get supported and is the ecosystem around it? Compare this with the Sun [Solaris 10] launch: it was very feature driven.

But if you look at the comparison, there are not many features where they are ahead, a few where they are behind, he added. And where they are ahead, these features are already in the [Linux] roadmap.

In order to make it easier for Sun Solaris users to migrate to Red Hat the company is extending its Red Hat Network (RHN) systems management technology to support Solaris. Customers with both operating systems will be able to manage both using RHN, according to Red Hat, although the capability could be more useful for migration projects.

Red Hat said the Red Hat Network Management Module for Solaris should be available as a subscription by the end of the second quarter.

As well as the RHN extension, Red Hat is now better positioned to take on Unix in its chosen verticals and other areas with Enterprise Linux 4, according to the company. Enterprise Linux 4 is the first official Red Hat release to be based on version 2.6 of the Linux kernel.

With the 2.6 kernel we have more carrier grade features, and we’re getting more ready to replace Sun, said Knoblich. As well as carrier grade features, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 also sees the delivery of the Security Enhanced Linux functionality originally developed at the National Security Agency.

It opens up more markets, particularly in the government space, which we see as critical, said Knoblich of the SE Linux functionality, which provides granular permissions for users, programs, processes, files, and devices.

Like Red Hat’s community Fedora Project, RHEL 4 defaults to the new targeted SE Linux policy that locks down specific daemons, especially those most vulnerable to attack or that would have the most impact if compromised.

A lot of the advances in RHEL 4 actually come from the 2.6 kernel, added Red Hat senior consulting engineer and Linux kernel developer, Stephen Tweedie. A lot of what’s key to out customers is at the kernel level. A lot of that has been spearheaded by Red Hat and Red Hat developers.

Red Hat is slow to market with the 2.6 kernel compared to rival Novell Inc, however. Novell released SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 in August 2004, although Tweedie denied this will put Red Hat at a disadvantage.

Obviously the 2.6 kernel has been out for six to nine months now, but we’ve had RHEL 4 in alpha and beta testing for six to nine months, so we have the experience with it, he said. Red Hat also backported many of the technologies from the Linux 2.5 development release back to Linux 2.4 when it created Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.

A major difference between RHEL 3 and RHEL 4 is that the latest version comes in four packages, with the Red Hat Desktop added to Enterprise Linux WS for workstations, as well as ES and AS for servers. The previous Red Hat Desktop was launched in May 2004, seven months after RHEL 3.

Another new change is that the support lifecycle for the products has been extended to seven years, from the existing five, to meet the extended support needs of enterprise customers. The change has also been applied to RHEL 2 and 3, extending their support to seven years from their initial release.