Sometimes, Web developers want to use a newer version of Ruby of Python than what is included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). In order to meet the needs of those developers, Red Hat has put out a new beta release called Software Collections 1.0. It includes Ruby 1.9.3 with Rails 3.2.8, Python 2.7 and 3.3, PHP 5.4, Perl 5.16.3 and the technology preview of Node.js version 0.10. All will be supported by Red Hat except for the Node.js preview. The release also includes MariaDB version 5.5, MySQL version 5.5 and PostgreSQL version 9.2.
Red Hat plans to issue a new Software Collection every eighteen months. They won’t replace the standard tools in RHEL, but will provide an alternative for developers who want or need to use more recent versions of the languages.