The Life Cycle allows customers and partners to effectively plan, deploy and support Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat provides support and maintenance over stated time periods for the major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (such as versions 7 or 8). The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle is detailed on their web site. The information about Red Hat Linux shown below is mainly of historical value. Red Hat used to distribute 'Red Hat Linux.' After Red Hat Linux version 9, Red Hat retooled their offerings and released the first RHEL as version 2.1. CentOS, Scientific Linux, and Oracle Linux aim to provide 100% compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. As a result, several distributors have created re-branded and/or community-supported rebuilds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that can legally be made available without official support from Red Hat. While Red Hat uses strict trademark rules to restrict free re-distribution of their officially supported versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat freely provides the source code for the distribution's software even for software where this is not mandatory. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is licensed by the University of Michigan and is the only Linux distribution fully supported by LSA Technology Services.

It is designed to be stable and secure over a long lifetime, up to 13 years (10 years standard) for each version. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is Red Hat's subscription-based, vendor-supported Linux distribution targeted toward the commercial and academic markets.

Red hat enterprise linux server 7.1