Forecasted Red Hat Releases

Lots of folks ask when the next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be released or even the next Update, now known as point releases.  My career is based around using Red Hat products and I find this information important for planning future roll outs.  Also, the ever so important question of here’s a random Beta, do I need to test it now or do I have time to work on other projects.

My goal here is to make a page of ‘”forecasted” release dates using my experience working with Red Hat products and people.  These are forecasted dates.  I have no relationship with Red Hat, Inc. and have no knowledge of their internal release schedules.

If you are looking for the Release Schedule for Fedora it is public from the Fedora Project.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

  • Initial Release: March 14th, 2007
  • 5.1 Release: November 7, 2007
  • 5.2 Release: May 21, 2008
  • Forecasted 5.3 Release: December, 2008

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4

  • Inital Release: Feburary 14, 2005
  • Update 1: June 9, 2005
  • Update 2: October 5, 2005
  • Update 3: March 7, 2006
  • Update 4: August 11, 2006
  • Update 5: May 2, 2007
  • Update 6: November 15, 2007
  • Update 7: July 24, 2008
  • Forecasted Update 8: February, 2009

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3

  • Update 7: March 16, 2006
  • Update 8: July 21, 2006
  • Update 9: June 12, 2007
  • Update 10: Not Released - End of Deployment Support

Oddly enough, Red Hat seems to have extended the Deployment support window for RHEL 3 most likely due to the delay for RHEL 5.  Looks like there will be an Update 9 after all.  Especially as I’m getting bug reports tagged `rhel-3.9`.  Deployment support now ends Jun 30, 2007.