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End of Life for Red Hat 7.x, 8.0
thelenm writes "Red Hat announced today that the 7.x and 8.0 distributions have reached their errata maintenance end-of-life. Red Hat 9 reaches its end-of-life on April 30. The options for those who want to stick with Red Hat are Red Hat Enterprise Linux or the Fedora Project, as described on their Migration Resource Center page. Or of course, you might take this opportunity to select another option." This day's been a long time coming, but it's finally here.
I'm really rather dissapointed by this. Although I wasn't too impressed with the way that Redhat liked to play games with the files and directories in /etc (among other things), I've always been pleased with how easy it was to get a RH distro installed and running. After just making the switch to Debian and going through the agony of selecting packages with an ackward selection tool, I appreciate RH's RPM system even more.
How long will Fedora be providing RPMs for RedHat 7.3, 8.0 and 9.0?
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It'll be interesting to see what the future holds for Red Hat, though, as well as a few other things. With Win98SE losing its support come June and RH9 come April, I wonder how many will migrate to something different and how many will stick it out, hoping nothing catastrophic happens to their legacy platform of choice.
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The new pricing policy really hurt RedHat and Linux at our school. What folks had been promoting as a cheap alternative to MS software has now closed ranks on price. It took a pile of work to get admins to understand that "RedHat = good", and the fact that "RedHat" as they know it now costs money has been enough to push a variety of departments off the Linux path.
I know they have to make money, I just wish it wasn't at the cost of marketshare. It would really make my life easier if I could port more people to Linux or OSX.
RH9 was the only Linux distro (and the first) that
I ever tried. It was ok, the only reason I don't
use it anymore is that 1024x768 resolution
wouldn't work on the computer I was using at the
time.
When I get another harddrive for my current
computer, it'll definitely have Fedora on it
before you can say "Put it on your main drive,
you Windows Troll!".
Has anybody found that running up2date on Fedora core 1 has been a trying experience lately? I realise that this is the lazy way of keeping a machine patched, but up2date has been a great facility since redhat 8.0 (I had a bad experience with 7.3). I think their (fedora) site is having trouble coping with the load.
I really hope that Fedora core can fill the shoes of Redhat 9! Time will tell.
And this same week Microsoft just added two years to the WIn98 EOL. I have a RH9 server that gets no support after April this year. That doesn't make me happy. I have a backup with Trustix standing by, but they haven't been real stable either. I'm looking at possibly picking Win2k3 as I know it will have support for 5 more years guaranteed. Redhat needs to step up and offer something to paying customers that want to stay with RH9.
I guess the Linux community can stfu about the great support.
Two of my servers are still 7.2, while both are updated up to today and both secured as possible.
Up to recently I still had one 6.x but machine died and that was the end of it
latest kernel
proftpd instead of vsftpd
samba 3.0
apache 2.0
opengroupware (in testing mostly)
mysql 4
qmail instead of postfix (or it was sendmail)
latest cups
openldap
squid
etc, etc
No one stopped support, just up2date from redhat doesn't work anymore (I have 5 enterprise server licenses but not even once I used up2date), all apps and services are still compatible, and all of them are still patched and updated, which is far more than someone could say about NT
Sorry, but as such I don't see difference
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From a redhat customers perspective this is bad. To many this is the exact reason they moved away from microsoft.
......
Redhat hasnt been my distro of choice for quite some time, but for many people it is the "only" linux they know of or use.
Personally i hope novell/suse take advantage of this and prevent people from moving back to the evil empire.
And although I personally use gentoo on my systems and I know people who use debian, I wouldnt recomend a non-experienced admin use either, and most linux admins are really windows admins which is why you see so many linux boxes that get broken into
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
guess it was too much money being spent without any inflow, so it had to stop.But didnt expect it to stop so soon. Always thought that RH was someone who would provide support as long as possible.
Lord of the Binges.
While there are a lot of options, I wouldn't call them "viable". To be viable option for *RedHat* users, it must: (1) have a significant support base, (2) be as easy to use, if not easier, and (3) be well known.
That limits the list severly - to a small list even: Debian, Gentoo, Suse, Mandrake, and Country-specific distros.
However, the slashdot "peoples" are right in picking Debian as "another option" simply because it's *different* (and they're biased).
There are three "foundations" to build from: Redhat, Debian, and Gentoo. And Redhat wins in that department... Gentoo isn't being used as a foundation yet, so that leave Debian.
--sea
Hey Microsoft will now support it til 06 right ?! Thats 8 years of support. With the Evil RedHat people Dropping support in only 2 years Does that mean Microsoft good, RedHat Evil ? (Oh the Humanity !)
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I'll throw a plug in for whitebox linux.
It's RHE3 isos without the support (and with different brand graphics).
Not sure what the differences between Fedora (RH9) and whitebox (RHE3) are. Sure would appreciate enlightenment though.
Okay guys, when it was announced that Microsoft was pulling the plug on a much older and obsolete product, we all aimed our pitchforks at them. Are we going to do the same for Redhat?
"Derp de derp."
A good friend of mine just got started in Linux and chose SuSE Linux. I've been using Redhat 9 since last year, and had never seen SuSE, so it was a lot of fun to set it up together. Once we got past the FTP install (I'd never done that before), it was a dream. I mean it really blew me away. It found his TV tuner card (Winfast 2000 XP Deluxe, I think) automatically and put a link to a tuner application on his desktop. He literally logged in for the first time, double-clicked and was watching TV, color, sound, everything. This was amazing to me, as I spent two weeks trying to get my Audigy 2 and winmodem to work with RH9 way back when, before finally giving up and deciding You Can't Get There From Here.[1]
It's really slick, polished, and the installer (YAST) is the first thing I've ever seen in a Linux distribution that would make me willing to spend money.[2] This weekend I'm going to wipe RH9 and give it a try. They even have a live-eval CD image if you want to try it out first, before giving up HD space.
[1] Eventually fixed, but if I hear "emu10k.o" one more time I'm going into orbit.
[2] Plus the lizard thing is cute.
I have to ask the same question. Why are people so freaked about Fedora? I downloaded it, installed in in place of my trusty RH8, and it's great. Looks like RedHat 10 to me. Up2date's caused zero problems for me, and everything else is slick as a whistle, too. The only difference is that I no longer worry about whether my RHN account is still active. This is a great distro. Why are we all having fits about having to find another one?
How about some useful information, other than this "gentoo rulez, you suck!" nonsense...
Like, remotely upgrading a live redhat 8/9 machine to fedora.
I'm sure I'm not the only person that loses goodwill when I have to explain to my boss why he has to write another check for something he thinks he already bought. I suspect that this move will lead to a hell of a lot of unpatched Red Hat 9 boxes sitting around after April 1st. Red Hat has made it difficult to keep boxes secure by charging for updates. Savvy sysadmins have already installed apt-for-rpm, or something similar, but Windows shops that tried out Linux for fun are going to feel burned.
Anyway, I lobbied for Mandrake at the beginning, but the PHB wanted something he had heard about. But I think I can use the specture of us needing to pay for the top corporate up2date subscription as a way to argue for Mandrake. 9.2, here I come.
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
I run Debian GNU/Linux, and in my experience, they either find the security problem (and so they are the first to release an update) or they have an update out within a few hours to a day or two at most. There are rare exceptions, such as the time the OpenSSH group released an announcement saying "there is a security problem, we won't tell you what it is, upgrade to the latest version with privilege seperation that breaks tons of stuff". One other nice feature is that they always backport the fix to the current version in stable, and avoid adding any other new code. All this only applies to stable, of course, but generally the new upstream version that fixes the problem is uploaded to unstable in a timely fashion.
As far as freshness, I run stable, with self-prepared backports of key software such as printer drivers (hpoj and hpijs), and a backport of XFree86 4.2.1 to support my video card (ATI Radeon Mobility 7500). I also have a chroot with a complete installation of unstable for newer software, with a "mount --bind" for the X server socket directory so that I can run any X application in the chroot transparently. On the rare occasions that unstable has a problem (not as common as the name "unstable" leads you to believe, but a minor issue comes up every other month or so for me), I know how to roll back packages and put them on hold, and wait for a fix.
Many posts are drawing a parallel between this action by RedHat and Microsoft's eol'ing (or not eol'ing) Win98.
1) Yes, they are both doing this for the same reason: MONEY
2) No, it's not the same because THIRD PARTIES CAN SUPPORT REDHAT. If you want to start your own DEAD RH support company, go ahead. You have the full source.
3) No, it's not the same because YOU CAN UPGRADE FOR FREE. Go download it. No one is left behind here.
4) No, it's not the same because NO ONE IS LOCKED IN. If you want to jump off of the RedHat ship, nothing is stopping you - you're not stranded. Copy and run those same binaries on debian, gentoo or roll-your own, anytime you want to.
I'd been considering switching to Debian because I approve of their hard-line position on freedom, but that experience convinced me that it's nowhere close to being ready for prime time.
Yes, I know that there are a bunch of "Debian-based" distributions out there that are supposed to be easier to install. But I'm not particularly interested in a "Debian-based" distribution, any more than I'm interested in a "RedHat-based" distribution.
Most people associate EOL with the complete disappearance of support for the product, as the true power of open source has not fully caught on yet. Why don't we beat people over the head with this?
I feel that because we don't make a big deal about 3rd party support for open source linux distros, people form an unfounded negative perception of the community. Come on guys!
I've been thinking about the daemon lately. He's calling me.
This Redhat thing may have just pushed me over the edge. My thinking is that this is a good opportunity to make a clean break.
Maybe it's time for me to finally give BSD a spin on one of my test boxes instead of switching LINUX distros. I have to learn a whole new setup procedure and distribution ens and outs, I may as well leanr a whle new OS while I'm at it.
Now would that be Free BSD, Open BSD or Net BSD? Hmmmmm..
Huh?
Suggesting that a specialized distro like Gentoo should be able to please both "newbies" and "hard core" users alike is akin to wanting a Formula1 racecar to provide enough seating for your family, to be able to start itself (Formula1 cars usually have an external starter motor that is attached to the crankshaft by the pit crew at the beginning of the race to start the engine and later removed IIRC) and run with minimal maintenance for as long as your regular street-legal car can.
It just isn't done.