[13] GCC 2.96 failed to compile the Linux kernel, and some other software used in Red Hat, due to stricter checks.

The distribution included a previous version of GCC for compiling the kernel, called "kgcc".

However, this did cause some negative reactions among existing Western European users, whose legacy ISO-8859–based setups were broken by the change.

[14] Version 9 supported the Native POSIX Thread Library, which was ported to the 2.4 series kernels by Red Hat.

[15] Red Hat Linux lacked many features due to possible copyright and patent problems.

For example, MP3 support was disabled in both Rhythmbox and XMMS; instead, Red Hat recommended using Ogg Vorbis, which has no patents.

This was changed in late 2003 when Red Hat Linux merged with the community-based Fedora Project.

The model is similar to the relationship between Netscape Communicator and Mozilla, or StarOffice and OpenOffice.org, although in this case the resulting commercial product is also fully free software.