RHEL 6 Is Out
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL 6) is out, and it brings a huge set of improvements over RHEL 5 for desktop users. Here is a curated list of highlights that I find particularly useful on an EL6 workstation: Core System & Filesystems Upstart: Replaces traditional SysV init (Upstart Wiki) Dracut: Modern event-driven initramfs generator (Dracut Wiki) ext4: Default robust filesystem (Fedora ext4 Feature) Btrfs: Available as a technology preview (Btrfs in Fedora) Boot & Graphics Plymouth: Smooth graphical boot flicker-free animations (Plymouth) Kernel Mode Setting (KMS): Native resolution and smooth transitions during boot (KMS) Xorg 1.7: nouveau open-source driver for NVIDIA cards (Nouveau) R600 3D hardware acceleration for AMD/ATI Radeon (R600 Accel) xrandr 1.3 dynamic monitor handling (LWN Article) Native DisplayPort audio and video support Performance & Security Tickless Kernel: Significant power savings on idle systems (Tickless Kernel) Tuned: Adaptive power management profiles (Power Management) PolicyKit & XACE: Fine-grained privilege management without root elevation (Polkit) Desktop & Multimedia GDM PAM Stacks: Support for multiple authentication backends (Multiple PAM in GDM) ConsoleKit Fast User Switching: Seamless desktop switching (Fast User Switching) PulseAudio: Unified volume control across applications (Volume Control) Glitch-free audio playback via timer-based scheduling (Glitch-Free Audio) IBus: Modern input method framework replacing SCIM (IBus) Evolution 2.28: Native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007+ via OpenChange (OpenChange) OpenOffice.org 3.x: Native support for reading and writing Office Open XML (.docx, .xlsx) documents NetworkManager: System-wide connection profiles managed independently of user logins (System Connections) Desktop Environments GNOME 2.28 (major upgrade from 2.16 in RHEL 5) KDE 4.3 Xfce available via EPEL SPICE: High-performance remote desktop protocol support Official Press Release: Red Hat Flexibility and Portability Product Overview: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop