Durham, North Carolina-based Red Hat Software Inc has updated its Linux operating system and says it will now operate on Intel Corp chips, as well as Alpha, and Sparc processors. The company first made its Unix-like operating system available for Sparc towards the end of last year (CI No 3,011) with the release of Linux 4.0. It says the new product is an upgrade to Red Hat Linux 4.1 released in February and claims it is has improved its networking speed by some 30%. Red Hat’s distribution sales manager Terry Tomlinson said the company had a reputation of being on the cutting edge and three or four product updates a year are not uncommon. Red Hat Linux 4.2 will apparently cope in a manner of environments, from serving secure web sites to hosting large databases. 4.2 can operate as either a desktop client for applications and software development, and as a thin client or for web browsing. Prices start around $50.
