Difference Between Ubuntu and Red Hat

Ubuntu vs Red Hat

Linux has various kinds of distributions, or simply called “distros”. There are actually a large number of major distributions and there a lot of sections and packages to consider.

Two of the more notable Linux distros are Ubuntu and Redhat, and this article will state the differences of these two.

Ubuntu literally means “Humanity towards others”. The word is from a Southern African ideology. The Ubuntu distribution is founded and headed by Mark Shuttleworth, the owner Canonical Ltd. The distro was first released on October 2004.

Ubuntu is based on the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and its development is aimed toward usability and ease of use and installation. Ubuntu has in fact become the most popular Linux based OS for desktop users. Since Ubuntu is Debian-based and packaged in .deb, it is expected to be more flexible.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), or simply Red Hat is made by Red hat Inc for commercial purposes. Therefore, it is not free for use unlike Ubuntu. At first, it was called the “Red Hat Commercial Linux” which was initially released on March 31, 2003. Mainly, the market it targets are businesses as it focuses on servers, mainframes, and supercomputers.

Marc Ewing and Bob Young are the founders of Red Hat, with the former as the creator of the distro. Later on, Young bought Ewing’s business and two formed a merger. Although, Red Hat is created for commercial purpose, the company sponsored the Fedora project which is free to use and modify. In short, Fedora is Red Hat’s community distro.

The packaging format that Red Hat and other products use the RPM package manager and it is the first of its kind to use such packaging system. It has become the catalyst for other, and now, popular Linux distros like the Mandriva and Yellow Dog.

Summary:

1. Ubuntu is free to use while Red Hat is not.

2. Ubuntu uses the dpkg (Debian) package system while Red Hat uses RPM package manager.

3. Ubuntu primarily aims for better usability and has become exceedingly popular for desktop use. Red Hat, on the other hand, is marketed for enterprise use.

4. Red Hat is closely associated to Fedora, another popular type of Linux distribution.

5. Red Hat is made by Red Hat Inc which is founded by Young and Ewing while Ubuntu is headed by Shuttleworth, owner of Canonical Ltd.

6. Due to its differing packaging system, Ubuntu is expected to be more flexible and easier to implement.

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