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GCN Home > 04/03/06 issue

Red Hat Linux Desktop

|GCN Lab Reviewer's Choice|

By Susan M. Menke, Special to GCN

Pros: Highly secure across the enterprise
Cons: Can only be purchased in lots of 10 or 50; requires dedicated administration
Price: $2,500 for Proxy Server Pack with 10 licenses, $13,500 for Satellite Starter Pack with 50 licenses
Features: A
Value: B
Security: A
Ease of use: B+


If Windows is a family sedan and basic Linux is an armored car, then Red Hat Linux Desktop is a mainline battle tank.

Using the Security-Enhanced Linux subsystem, this version of Linux looks at security on a program-to-program basis and not a user-to-user one. This means that an admin can set the security levels and permissions of an individual program on the network regardless of who the user is. A word processor, for example, may be able to do basic functions and save and load files to a local disk, but be restricted from accessing network drives or running macros. And default settings can be configured so that if a virus should arrive, it will find itself restricted and unable to do anything outside the security protocols, such as replicating itself throughout the network.

This does mean that if an individual user wants to do something special with a program on a Red Hat Linux Desktop, the administrator is probably going to have to specifically allow it. Thankfully, this does not require a visit to the desktop.

All control over the Linux enterprise network is given to the administrator, who can run almost everything from a central command system. Once the OS is installed on a local machine, users will probably rarely see the administrator again.

And all these management features the administrator is controlling work with a Web-based interface. The admin can manage and troubleshoot an individual desktop from this interface or a group of desktops, or every desktop on the network running the enterprise OS. Those of you familiar with Linux will know that this managing console can be launched from Red Hat’s own servers to simplify the process, so you don’t need to set up a local management server. But since most government agencies will want to have everything in-house, you can set it up yourself, which we did for our review.

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