Red Hat has announced the public availability of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 release candidate. The near-complete release includes updates based on feedback from beta testing. This RC version will give customers and strategic partners a chance to start integrating RHEL7 with their own systems in advance of the official release. According to Red Hat, RHEL7 RC comes with expanded support for Windows Active Directory, significant filesystem enhancements, and improved subsystem management through the OpenLMI management tool.
This announcement comes on the heels of several other announcements revealed at the recent Red Hat Summit in San Fransisco. Perhaps the most notable initiative introduced at the summit is Red Hat's new Project Atomic, an effort to develop a lightweight container host system for Docker container technology. Red Hat also announced the GearD community project, which will create and support development tools to encourage the development of container-ready applications.
Red Hat's plans to integrate GearD and Project Atomic with RHEL7 could mean that the trend toward container technology is the biggest story about Red Hat's latest Linux system.