Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES is ideal for a wide range of entry-level and departmental workloads such as network, file, print, mail, and web servers.

Red Hat has a family of Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions that address server and client operating environments. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES variants are for high-end and entry-level servers. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS variant is for technical workstations. Red Hat Desktop is the newest Red Hat Enterprise Linux family member and is designed for the general purpose desktop user.

How do the Red Hat Enterprise Linux family members differ, and how do I know which one to use?

From a technology viewpoint the four members of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux family, AS, ES, WS and Red Hat Desktop are similar. A design goal of the family is to maintain a high degree of commonality so that they provide a consistent environment for applications and for those administering the machines. AS and ES are designed for servers. WS is designed for compute nodes and technical workstations. Red Hat Desktop is designed for the typical corporate office. AS and ES provide identical functionality. ES is licensed for servers with up to 2 CPUs and 16GB of main memory while AS is licensed for servers of any size and any architecture. WS and Red Hat Desktop do not include many of the open source server applications that are provided with AS and ES, so they are not suitable for server environments. Red Hat Desktop supports single CPU systems with up to 4GB of main memory, while WS supports dual CPU systems and has no memory restriction.
More info about our product matrix can be found on http://www.redhat.com/rhel/ .