Dear FTP Mirror Administrators, You are about the last group of people who need a lesson on how much Linux has changed over the past couple of years. The wide acceptance for individuals, small businesses and corporations have changed our product strategy. We'd like to take the launch of Skipjack as an opportunity to give you some information about what we're up to. In the past we've built all the features we can into one extremely versitle version of Red Hat Linux. The differing needs of individuals and corporations have grown significantly. Our response has been to develop two versions of our OS, one for the Enterprise and one for Consumers. The Consumer version of Red Hat Linux will be the version where new features are added. Skipjack contains the latest version of the kernel, KDE, Perl, and Evolution just to name a few. As time goes on, the Consumer version will include more and better configuration tools, easier and faster installation, and new applications and features from the community and Red Hat Development. Red Hat will continue to keep the Consumer version open source with full binary and source RPMs and ISO Images available. In order to keep up with the fast community developments, the Consumer version will be updated approximately every six months. The version of Red Hat Linux for Enterprise deployments will be where reiable features are incorporated to run on high-end servers. We have heard from CIOs that the latest features aren't what they're interested in, they want the features that have been around for several months for evaluation and debugging. The Enterprise version will have features that will not be available in the Consumer version. Including clustering and kernel tuning for now. In true Red Hat style, the Enterprise version will be open source. Binary and source RPMs will be available for you to distribute. In addition to needing proven features, Enteprise customers seek a longer development cycle. Red Hat Linux Enterprise versions will be released on a 12-18 month interval. We're confident that having two different versions of Red Hat Linux for different customers and deployments will allow us to serve both groups. FTP Mirrors are an important part of the equation, we hope that this information sheds some light on why Red Hat is sending you two versions of the OS. Best Regards, Red Hat Product Management Bill Mason, Director Mike Ferris, Red Hat Linux Enterprise Shelley Bainter, Red Hat Linux Consumer -- Minneapolis St. Paul Twin Cities MN | Phone : (952)943-8700 http://www.mn-linux.org Minnesota Linux | Fax : (952)943-8500 Key fingerprint = 6C E9 51 4F D5 3E 4C 66 62 A9 10 E5 35 85 39 D9