Red Hat flagship backs Linux standard

Dominant Linux-provider Red Hat has given a boost to Linux standardisation efforts with this week’s broad Linux Standards Base (LSB) certification of
the company’s flagship product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.

Red Hat claims the RHEL 3 is the first enterprise Linux platform to achieve certification across all LSB Runtime Environment architectures. The
certification is designed to ensure that applications remain easily portable across different Linux distributions — a problem that hobbled Unix, the
operating system on which Linux is modelled.

“This means if a person writes an application compliant to LSB Version 1.3, they know it will run on the x86 or S/390 architectures, and by the way,
it will also run on SuSE Linux, a Sun desktop, on Caldera, and the rest,” said Paul Salazar, director of marketing with Red Hat Europe, Middle East
and Africa (EMEA). “We feel this is an important step. It’s really all about portability and flexibility.”

Various Linux distributions from Red Hat competitors such as SuSE Linux, UnitedLinux, Turbolinux and MandrakeSoft have achieved LSB certification, but
the companies have focused on Intel platforms.