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Red Hat Linux 9 Reaches End-of-Life
egburr writes "Well, today is the last day for Red Hat Linux 9. The Fedora Legacy Project is supposed to start legacy support. I am still planning to stick with RHL9, for a while at least. How many others are planning to do the same? How many are switching to Fedora? How many are switching to some other distribution altogether? How many have already switched? For people still using earlier levels of Red Hat Linux (6.x,7.x,8), how well has the Fedora Legacy Project worked for you?"
I'm already using fedora legacy to update rh8.0 and 7.2 boxes (only four fortunately).
No complains.
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade from fedora legacy work flawlessly.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
moving our desktops to fedora, :)
but my box will always be debian
fedora is good for set it and forget it,
but i like debian for myself
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
Technically, who's responsible for the Fedora Legacy Support? If it is just the community, it doesn't sound like much.
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I switched the few units I had on RH to SuSE about 6 months ago. Sure you don't have ISOs to download but you can WGET the FTP site and do your own private, in house FTP install just as easily. SuSE stable and has good documentation.
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at my university just finished moving over to fedora, which i discovered in lab just today.. im at colorado state u. as for me personally i havent descided which distro to use on the dual boot system i have yet.
Once the announcement came out that the only free version would roll over every 6 months, I switched to Debian on all my work systems (I already run Debian exclusively at home).
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
I am still planning to stick with RHL9, for a while at least. How many others are planning to do the same?
Looking at JDS myself.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Isn't it a bit early to kill off RHL9 ? I haven't really been paying attention since I'm a Debian whore (and Debian releases are few, far-between and far-too-few-things-changed), but it seems it's a rather fresh release.
Or is this being done to give their commercial offerings a little more real estate ? Fedora may be the "new" Redhat Linux, but some of the more idiotic corporate users they won't have the synaptic ability to Google that correlation, and will be led to believe that RHL is no longer a "Free" "Hacker" "Distribution" but rather a "mature" "enterprise" "solution".
Aww heck it's a theory.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I just switched for security reasons. I pointed nessus at an install of RH 9 and it came back with 6 or so remote exploits (Apache/SSL, PHP sendmail, named, mysql and openssh)
I installed Fedora 1 with the same services and only got back the openssh bug, and that was easy to update from source. Yeah, I know I can patch 9 from source myself but it's too much of a pain in the ass to do regularly. I'd rather have something newer just because there's less to patch. It's like racing against the hackers. I'd rather start at the pole than at the back of the pack where they are.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
I decided to switch to SUSE not long after I heard they were going to kill support. I like it a lot better.
Having to bring along (kicking and screaming) several other folks in the office that need a bit of a crutch, I'm working the Mandrake way now.
Will it stay that way? Probably, at least until I see a reason not to.
I'm managing a remotely hosted Redhat 9 server. Does anyone know how risky (or even possible) it would be for me to upgrade to Fedora Cora 1 by simply pointing my sources.list at an FC1 repository and doing an apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade?
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
When RedHat decided to throw in the towel for any real distro
When did this happen'?
Redhat just moved people distro where it belongs. Between people.
Redhat still supports development in Fedora, and even funds it. Funny I've been noticing only improvements (since the change) and no stepbacks. Fedora is just as supported as RH ever was, no better, no worse (except there's much more choices now, yum instead up2date, and more public repositories). You'd notice if you try to search package for RH9 and same package for Fedora.
I really don't know what is people problem with Fedora and neither does anyone that didn't jump to conclusion before even trying.
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I went to Debian, and I'm happy. I figure if anyone's going to support their (free) product for a long time, it's the Debian Project.
...and I will never look back.
The only real change is that more people are working on the project, and telephone support is not really an option. So did you ever call before? I thought not.
I have been using Fedora Core 1 at home and Fedora Core 2 beta on my work laptop since it became available. No complaints here!
Let me comment you back. (Not to bash Debian but I'm really interested)
I run Fedora on my server and I can tell you that it lacks nothing, for your info, it's only gains against RH9.
Few questions:)
Why do you think that you need server version. I have two of them but can't realize why small enterprise would need RHES. Yes, there are gains for enterprise (I mean ENTERPRISE) but (for SME) other than paid RH support there's nothing, and even that is needed only in case that in-house lacks administration or administration is not good enough.
Does Debian do server version, you said you changed to debian and now you cry about server?
What does RH9 and Debian offer (on server part) that FC1 doesn't (I already told you that support lacks nothing, it has only gotten better)?
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
I use gentoo almost exclusively and I have slack 9.1 on a laptop. I can't bring myself to stop using slack since I used it since my first dealings with Linux many years ago but gentoo is just too sexy to deny. I'm installing stage 1 right now on an old PIII 500Mhz with 512M of RAM using 12 servers to do the work with distcc. mmmm emerge + distcc
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
Short story: HP ze5385 notebook took much time/sweat to get RH9 tweaked for onboard wireless, firewire, video, Ethernet, sound, etc. Have run it for 8 months co-partitioned with WinXP. The Win partition melted, I was going to devote the whole drive to RH9 when someone brought a Lindows Desktop Edition CD to our LUG meeting, almost as a joke. For laughs I popped it in the laptop. Twenty minutes later we were not laughing, I was surfing the net on the auto-detected onboard wireless, listening to streaming audio through the auto-detected sound card, etc. you get the picture. It is Debian under the hood, with serious attention focused on installation, a large database of supported hardware, and many concessions (?) to the MS-entranced user base.
"If no one tilts at windmills, the damn things will take over the world!"- christian simpleman
I was loyal to Redhat for almost 5 years (of buying CD's, retail boxes, etc) but I jumped ship back when the announcement first came out about RHL "going away".
I replaced RHL on all but one of my servers with FreeBSD and never looked back. The other one is the firewall, which runs OpenBSD.
-k-
I've got a gut feeling that Novell's SuSE is going to eventually unseat RedHat as the #1 solution for server AND desktop, so I'd might as well dump my RH9 desktop for it now.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Fedora core installation was a snap on my box. My wireless card worked right out of the install, yum updated everything flawlessly, and its been up for 3 weeks now serving as my mediacenter in my home with a radeon 9600se and a bttv878 tv/fm card. Why not wait on getting fedora core 2, a lot work has been done to bring core 1 to where it is
I switched everything to FreeBSD one year ago when they made the first anouncements about facing out support for the RedHat Linux series.
It was the best thing I have ever done! It was the most painless migration I have ever done, and things just work! No more searching around trying to get all the dependencies to meet.
There is nothing that can get me back on linux again.
PS: Yes, I have tried Debian, everything is obsolete, and gentoo just hasn't matured. Further gentoo tries to do too much in one swift move failing to recognize how brilliant ports really is...
So what's a midsize company with a limited IT budget to do? Drop RedHat. I hate to do it, as we've had a great run with their products, but they apparently aren't interested in our type of business anymore. We will now have to find someone else that we can pay a reasonable amount of money for limited support (i.e. security patches).
I REALLY don't get the "MY LINUX IS BETTER THAN YOURS!" debate. 99% of the kernel, tools and utilities are the same.
I was talking to a few guys from RedHat about this last week. They said it was more of a marketing/pricing thing than any grand plan to abandon home users. It just helps their image in the "Suits" world to say they are focusing on "Corporate" clients. And guess what, you can still buy RedHat workstation, and still pay about the same amount of $, and still get support for your system.
I really don't see any big change here.
Do I need a new pair of contacts?
Hey Dubbya, wanna serve your country, get a gun and join those boys in Iraq to see what "service" is really about.
I'm sorry to see what has been happening with RH and the experiences of some of its users. I've not tried a "proper" RH distro, however its a pity to see folk dropping Linux and going to XP on account of their experience with RH.
Perhaps I can ask them to consider SuSE Linux?
I tried Installing Linux in the late 90's and encountered problems from the beginning.
Freebie CD's based on an old "RH compatible" kernel failed - no suprise there. "Definite Linux" based on a later "RH compatable" kernel didn't wan't to compile on my machines. (Definite vanished some time back).
These were in no way valid tests of the official RH release. However, being European I decided to go for a European distro, which I figured was in the business for the long term. SuSE seemed keen to support the individual home user as well as the corporate users.
It was the purchase of SuSE 7.3 Pro that got me up and running on Linux at home. By the time 8.2 Pro arrived, YAST was making software installation much easier, especially from downloaded rpm's.
I am very happy with SuSE Linux which has after all helped to distill my interest in Linux. I have to use XP at work and always look forward to booting up my Linux box at home.
There will always be detractors of various Linux distro's. I think SuSE have been underated in the past. They continue to support the individual and the corporate user, providing a pretty good experience out of the box, while also giving the newbie Linux user confidence to take small steps towards learning by doing.
While there is plenty of scope for learning with SuSE Linux, I'm still planning to learn by trying other distro's when I can make the time.
Three cheers for SuSE!
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Fedora Core 1 would not install on my dual p3-600 machine (which has been running RH since 6.2), no matter how many faqs and mailing lists I consulted for advice. I finally gave up and went to Knoppix. A couple hours of work after the install to get all my little tweaks working and I was home free... no regrets at all.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I switched to FreeBSD and it's even better. Smaller, faster, and easier than Debian. For a web server it can't be beat.
The above is not worth reading.
I'll second that here too. Red Hat Enteprise Linux is a package not just a pile of bits. Its a support and service arrangement, qualification, support and all the stuff that goes with it.
...
I don't think anyone has any problems with white box. If you want conservative and you don't want any support or guarantees then it may well fit better than Fedora.
I think for the average hacker however RHEL3 and White Box are not going to appeal that much, because they are older software - that people are sure works or know the limits of - and not the latest and greatest. No SVG themed gnome 2.6, no current KDE, no 2.6 kernel
Well, i made the switch to Fedora Core 1, and for what i do i notice no change. Of course i don't even run a GUI, or X, but it does everything i need. I don't ask much out of a server, but i've gotten better performance out of the mandrake ADVX server.
I'm still looking for a good high performance web/mail/ftp server distro, but nothing has been outstanding thus far. I like the mandrake distro, as i started with it, and i like the ADVX and most of the collections of packages.
Looking for some good server management, but i'll probably just use webmin like everyone else. I know i should be using bsd, but last time i tried that it was such a PITA that i went to redhat.
The biggest reason for the Enterprise version is that it will have a life of 5 years. This means that I can deploy a server, and expect it to remain secure and stable for a significant ammount of time.
This is worth money when your responsible for a significant number of servers, and this is what you pay for. When everyone is running Linux 2.8 or 3.0 or whatever is after 2.6, Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 should still be secure and supported on the servers its deployed on.
This will not be the case for Fedora Core 1, 2 or whatever comes out next. Yes, I'll run FC on my personal machines (or any other distribution) but I don't want to have to rebuild a server for years after its deployed if its a production box.
This is why they have the split, for work, I need the stability of a long deployment life, for hobby, I want the newest sharpest toys to play with. Toys get replaced with the latest toys when they come out.
I run a small website for a non-profit organization. Up until abut 2 weeks ago, I was using RH8 & RH9. My intention, before the end-of life annoucement sometime last year, my intention was to have a current release running the primary server, then setting up a stable "new" version when it was released (eg, go from RH8 to RH9) as a backup.
Primarily, I was doing this for patches and bugfixes. I also (being a non-profit) wanted a quick, easy cheap fix and little downtime. If a catastrophic failure occured on the primary, I'd just move the CAT5 cable to the backup server, change a couple settings, and the backup is the primary. Then I can turn my full attention to the smoldering dead server.
However, when RH announced their EOL set for this spring, I started looking around for a replacment server OS.
Prerequistites were:
FREE (non-profit = no budget in my case)
Support system
Ease of patch/upgrade
I have a friend who runs BSD. I personally love some of the features it BSD incorperates. I espcially love the ports system. I hated all the file tree seemed foreign compared to Linux-based distros.
I tried everything from Knoppix, Debian, Slack, Fedora, a few no-names I don't recall. I finally settled on Gentoo.
As mentioned above it is a "young" distro. I love the portage system for upgrades. I did a install based off a stage3 tarball, and had my server (P2/400MHz) up and running FULLY in about 10 hours. Granted, that is not an acceptable downtime for some, but I have a mirror-setup between my primary and backup server, making it very easy to change who is primary.
I have been using it for a Desktop for about a year and love it. As for a comparision between RH and Gentoo - RH has ease of "special" setups - Cyrus-sasl + sendmail, etc. But, Gentoo is much easier to patch IMO.
In essence, I was very impressed with Gentoo's overall arrangement and would recommend it to anyone trying to switch from a RH w/o X installed (If you relied on X-windows for configuration of your server, then Gentoo may be a little more complex than that).
But, that's just one former RH admin's opinion.
Eh, I totally disagree. RedHat's quality has been slipping since 6.2, and continues to slip with Fedora. It's just not stable enough, and they mess around with the software packages and kernels WAY too much. Not to mention it's still one of the most bloated Linux distros you can install (if you adhere to package dependancies).
This may not be the case for you, but it sure is for me, and the hardware I support. I'm sick of finding non-RH kernels, or specially patched RH kernels, to keep stuff running right. They had horrible support for ReiserFS in the 7 series. Dependency hell everywhere you turned when dealing with RPMs directly.
Personally, I don't use RedHat at home, or recommended it to anyone I know outside of work (personally or professionally). There is NO enterprise class Linux distribution, YET. That doesn't mean Linux doesn't have a place in the enterprise computing pool of resources, it just means there isn't a prepackaged distro that's suitable for true enterprise consumption. Heck, aren't we still waiting for Linux to hit the desktop in good numbers, ANYWHERE?
Can RedHat make a true enterprise Linux distro? Maybe. I do think they have the resources to do it. I don't think they'll have a major shift in the thought that goes into building the distro, which is what's going to kill them in the long run.
I use Linux. I don't use RedHat. I try to spread the good word as much as I can, and install it in the appropriate situations. I'm getting ready to build some machines which will be donated to the Red Cross, and I'm going to use Linux on all of them. The distro won't be RedHat, or Fedora.
SuSE is pretty good for a "supported" distro. Debian is good all around... unfortunately the marketing droids at Redhat have convinced management that it is important that their distribution be "supported".
We're seeing problems like this: Vendor A gets their feet wet in the Linux arena by targetting Redhat 8. Vendor A supports their product on Redhat 8. Vendor A doesn't want a lot of hassle from this, Redhat 8 is a perfectly valid modern operating system which should continue to be supported until the OS is genuinely outdated.
Redhat announces that support for Redhat 8 is dropping off. Management says "Oh no, we have to migrate to RHEL 2.1". Vendor A says "we haven't migrated to RHEL 2.1, we're still only supporting Redhat 8." Security says "Hey, you can't run that, it's not secure anymore.".
Vendor A is faced with two options: Figure out what this RHEL 2.1 crap is and update their support documents, or dump Linux support. Since Redhat jumped ship for support so quickly, and there was no good reason for the version incresase other than a cash-grab on their part... loyalty goes out the window.
Vendor A drops Linux support, developers targeting Vendor A's product port their apps to the supported version of Unix.
The long-term outlook, I see three scenarios:
1. IBM steps in... "Holy S#$T, our customers are being hosed on Linux support by our friends Redhat! Redhat better fix it or we're going to pick up where they left off... we should also look into buying them, we may as well save the brand if we're keeping their promises. This is bad."
2. Novell steps in "Remember us? We still support your old legacy NetWare stuff, we're a good company who's been around for decades, we're doing this Linux thing with SuSE. Want to try Linux again? We're already the distro of choice on IBM's big iron."
3. Developers never touch Linux again.
(If you're gonig Fedora, you might as well go Debian or even FreeBSD. They have better track records)