Red Hat Software Inc, one of the companies aiming to make a commercial business out of the Linux shareware Unixalike operating system, is readying the latest incarnation of the operating system, Linux 5.0. The company promises the new edition will be easier to install with what it describes as a more intuitive and reliable disk partitioning user interface , automatic hardware configuration, sound support and a kickstart facility for system administrators.There’s also a new C library, called Glibc, which Red Hat claims offers better internationalisation and support for threads. Other features include configuration for multiple window managers and an enhanced set of graphical user-level and system administration tools. Meanwhile, the company has unveiled the latest version of the Applixware Office Suite, Applixware 4.3.7 with a new cut-price version aimed at the mass PC retail market. The software comes with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, email and an Hyper Text Mark-up Language authoring tool. There’s also a Professional Edition which features the standard Office components and a new Builder rapid application developing tool. The North Carolina based company last year signed a bundling deal with Applix Inc to bundle Applixware with its cut-price implementation of Linux (CI 2,938).
