Today, March 15, 2016, Red Hat announced the availability for testing of the Beta build of its upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.8 computer operating system for servers and desktops.



Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 has been in development for approximately six years, during which the number one Linux company in the world provided regular maintenance releases and security updates, keeping the acclaimed operating system reliable and stable at all times for organizations, enterprises, and small or medium-sized businesses.
The Beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 includes a significant amount of new features, among which we can mention the replacement of the Openswan IPsec implementation for Linux with the Libreswan project, providing users with one of the most used, supported, and secure VPN endpoint solution, as well as the addition of Relax-and-Recover system archiving tool for a more streamlined system administration experience.
"Nearly six years into its lifecycle, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 provides a stable, proven, and predictable foundation for organizations seeking to build and deploy large, complex IT projects with confidence," said Red Hat in today's announcement. "The beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 includes a number of new and updated features to help organizations preserve investments in existing infrastructure."
Better compatibility with Active Directory and Identity Management servers Being available to all customers with an active RHEL subscription, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 Beta also implements a new functionality to the YUM package manager that simplifies the addition of packages and streamlines the way required packages are located in the unsubscribed channels of the Red Hat Network during addition or enablement of new features.
Last but not least, the interoperability between Identity Management and Active Directory servers has been greatly improved thanks to the implementation of new features to SSSD (System Security Services Daemon), the Identity Management client code. An updated Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 base image is also available for customers who want to migrate their traditional workloads into containerized apps.