RHEL is the child of Red Hat Linux, which was primarily a consumer Linux distribution, but many system administrators used it for enterprise-level web hosting servers. Eventually, Red Hat decided to cash in on the enterprise market and developed RHEL. To keep the consumer Linux users happy, they also released Fedora, a community-driven version of the same operating system.

Fedora’s development line is faster and usually has newer packages. Some system administrators who want cutting-edge technology, still use Fedora for web hosting. But for many businesses that want stable long-term releases, RHEL has been their reliable choice. Some of the improvements in version 5.5 include support for latest hardware, better virtualization support, and improved memory management. Red Hat has an annual revenue of $653 million.

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YUM has been a long time in the making, and it was expected that it would eventually be the main Redhat packaging system. Now that it is, it is important for users new to RHEL 5 or CentOS to know the differences. Here are some quick and easy steps:

1. Register your system with RHN (Redhat Network): # rhn_register
2. Display an updated software list: # yum list updates
3. Install all updates: # yum update

If you only want to apply certain updates and not others, you can search for specific packages with:

# yum list {package-name}

For example, if you wanted to find “mysql”, you would enter: # yum list mysql

Once you get started with YUM, you will see its advantages and ease of use, making RHEL5 or CentOS a breeze for you. Even if you are new to the server, you will be up-to-date and secure in no time.