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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.
Why is debian always the "other option" when there are lots of alternatives?
Or you could chose an alternative here. Considerably more options.
~To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. -Yann Martel
Windows!
/me puts on flame suit covered in asbestos...
Paul Thurrott called it "The Alpha, the Omega, the XP to your Fedora!"
Progeny has already announced two updated packages, one for tcpdump and one for cvs. Can't find a public announcement, but they were sent to subscribers a few days ago.
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.
For those that are used to RH and don't want a big change, there are many distributions that are compiling the RHEL source and making their own distro. Thank you GPL!
Whitebox Enterprise Linux
cAos
Tao
just to name a few
I set up yum recently on Red Hat 8.0 and pointed it to the appropriate repositories - a free way to get backported security fixes for 8.0. A shame that Red Hat never mentioned this as an option in their e-mail to all the RHN subscribers...
I have a feeling that the shameless Debian plug will generate more discussion than the subject of the article -- and yes, there is another option. ;)
Am I the last remaining Slackware user?
> Why? I mean... why does RedHat have to be all corporate and crap now?
... free. Thanks Red Hat.
Well, they are a company that answers to shareholders. They have to 'be all corporate and crap now' because it costs them a money to backport stuff, manage and communicate the updates, etc. Unlike Microsoft, they don't have $50 billion in phat l00t sitting around to support an old OS like Windows 98. I salute them for supporting 7.0 and 8.0 for as long as they have. Truly commendable.
Currently I'm running Fedora, for free, with *very* quick update turn-around, again
Was this inevitable? Why should anyone be surprised? They are only keeping on the line that is making them money, like any normal company would, no? I guess this is a product of their staffing level reaching a critical mass; a level whereby their own popularity has killed off their product line. Bandwidth costs, and plain old time and money are an unavoidable part of the Free Software mentality. Good will don't pay the bills! However, it is sad nonetheless. Plenty of smaller distros left that can afford to keep themselves going until they become so popular they have to become commercialised in one way or another too. Let's hope this isn't a sign of things to come.
PGP KeyId: 0x08D63965
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
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
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
I guess the Linux community can stfu about the great support.
No the Red Hat community can stfu about the great support...
Debian and many other distros still offer this "great support" you speak of.
Windows 98 = 8 years of support. I'd rather have 8 years of support for a buggy product than this.
In my experience, Windows 98, even with support from Microsoft, will consume a fair bit of effort just to keep functioning.
My unsupported RedHat 7.2 machines, on the other hand, are pretty much rock solid. The only thing that they really need now is the occasional security update, which you can get from Progency, or from Fedora Legacy, or you can roll your own. Rolling your own RPM isn't too hard, and in a lot of cases you can simply take the SRPM from Red Hat or Fedora and rebuild it for your system. Rolling your own updates for Windows isn't really an option, and Windows 98 would be such an unstable basis that I'd consider it a waste of effort.
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 !)
wanted: one clever sig,apply within
What the hell is with all these people bitching? You can upgrade to Fedora for free.
"Waah, redhat isn't supporting my free OS even though they've released a free upgrade for me"
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.
Why does it seem that Fedora is getting dismissed out of hand here? I installed it' it looks great. Why are you not taking it more seriously?
fedora has serious problems in it's installer. specifically in regards to laptops.
if you can get it installed, it's nice.. but trying to walk a newbie through an install asking him to type obscure commands or if he has a newer compaq laptop ask him to repeatedly hit the caps-lock key on every boot during installation is not acceptable.
Fedora is still beta-ware.. I'm hoping that they fix everything in core 2 but from the responses I am seeing on the bugzilla for it, I'm not expecting it to be fixed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Bob (resembles Pyro but with Luke Skywalker's whiney voice): "Waaah! They're dropping Redhat!"
Tom (resembles Emperor Palpatine but with Magneto's charm): "Come to the dark side, Bob!"
Bob: "The dark side? What's that?"
Tom: "BSD."
Bob: "But that's evil! All my penguin friends tell me so!"
Tom: "You're friends are flightless waterfowl that smell of herring. You are better than that. You have the potential."
Bob: "But it's not under the GPL!"
Tom: "Just pretend it is. There's nothing in the BSD license preventing you from fully and completely treating it as GPL."
Bob: "But it wouldn't really be the GPL. I would know and wouldn't be able to live with myself."
Tom: "We have gcc..."
Bob: "You do?"
Tom: "...and all the other GNU software in ports. Even glibc."
Bob: "Wow, I never knew. No wait! You're trying to trick me! I happen to know that BSD is development in a 'cathedral' like environment, instead of the politically correct chaos of the 'bazaar'."
Tom: "Words, words, just words. Yes, we have some procedures we adhere to, to prevent random code from entering the system, but is that any different from Linus holding the keys to the Linux kernel repository?"
Bob: "But BSD users are elitist!"
Tom: "Yes, we are. But you are worthy to join us. Look in your heart. You know you are better than flightless antarctic waterfowl."
Bob: "Hmmm, I guess you're right. But what about the software? What about my GNOME and MPlayer?"
Tom: "We have them too."
Bob: "But what about my NVidia card?"
Tom: "We have NVidia drivers."
Bob: "Opera? Java? Oracle?"
Tom: "Yes."
Bob: "Well okay then. I guess I'll switch."
Tom: "Fine. First I need you to sign this contract in your own blood. Then you need to renounce all that is good. Finally, you have to wear these horns..."
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Back when the choices were "Mac Classic" and Win95, had we heard that one of these was getting EOL'd, there would have been real pain. After just a few years, the debate isn't about how you're going to have to start using a typewriter or something, but how you're possibly going to make a good decision given the actual hundred or so choices available.
Would you have thought this possible in 1995? Your choice for the most part then was staying with WFWG or making the leap to Win95, although the choices we have now were beginning to come on-line then.
So RH ends, Fedora moves forward, and there are more reasonable choices available than most of us would have time to evaluate well. It's like the end of Tandy CP/M, only a hundred times better!
Qwitcher Bitchin.