RedSleeve is a free

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations * Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...

based on the

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learn ...

. It is derived from the

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop ...

(RHEL) distribution, ported to the ARM architecture. RedSleeve is derived from the free and open-source software made available by Red Hat, Inc., but is not produced, maintained or supported by Red Hat. Specifically, this product is built from the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions, under the terms and conditions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux's EULA and the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

. The name RedSleeve was chosen because it makes it intuitively obvious what upstream distribution it is derived from, while at the same time implying that it is for the ARM platform (we have sleeves covering our ARMs). RedSleeve is different from other Red Hat Enterprise Linux derivatives such as CentOS and

Scientific Linux Scientific Linux (SL) was a Linux distribution produced by Fermilab, CERN, DESY and by ETH Zurich. It is a free and open-source operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This product is derived from the free and open-source software ma ...

in that it is also a port to a new platform (ARM) that is not supported by the upstream distribution.

History

The first official Alpha release was made available on February 12, 2012.

Releases

Versioning scheme

RedSleeve aims to maintain equal versioning with the upstream distribution, both in terms of distribution release numbering and the individual package release numbering. The only exception is with the packages that had to be modified from the upstream release. This is only done to either remove upstream branding as required by the upstream distributions terms and conditions, or to apply additional patches required to make the package build and work on the ARM architecture which at the time of writing the upstream distribution does not support. In such cases, .0 is appended to the package version after the distribution tag.

Media coverage

RedSleeve Linux 6 was covered on The Register on May 29, 2012.

References

{{Fedora Linux derivatives ARM Linux distributions