Red Hat on Sept. 7 finally released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1. In a mailing-list message announcing the release, the company noted that "This is a public beta. Feel free to forward this announcement to anyone who may be interested in testing this beta release." RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux ) 5 Beta 1 was originally scheduled to appear in mid-July. Originally, Beta 2 was to have appeared in September. Despite this delay, Red Hat still plans to get the next version of RHEL out to customers by year"s end.