RHEL 6 No Longer Supported By Google Chrome

sfcrazy writes "Google has declared Red Hat's RHEL 6 obsolete, showing a notification which says, 'Google Chrome us no longer updating because your operating system is obsolete.' Red Hat evangelist Jan Wilderboer says: 'We release new stable versions of RHEL every 2-3 years. The API/ABI stability is what sets it apart from community distros. Customers need long term stability. Google knows (and uses) that itself internally. By cutting the support of enterprise distributions they simply tell me to move elsewhere. That's not a very encouraging thing.'"

Comments

RHEL 7 isn't even out yet!

[ZorinLynx]

What the heck are they thinking?

Also, RHEL versions are supported for a very long time. You can have systems running one version of RHEL, with security and bugfix updates for many years at a time. The whole point of the distro is stability; you don't have to worry about upgrading every six months.

What is Google thinking?

Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet!

[Anonymous Coward]

After re-iterating the summary, is there a point you are making?

Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't browse the web on my critical servers. I do browse it on my RHEL 6 Workstation (full disclosure: I don't use Chrome), Why do I have a RHEL 6 Workstation? So that my management workstation uses the same OS as my servers and I don't have to think about the differences in OS versions, especially if I need to test something...

Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet!

[butalearner]

Can't get to TFA at work, so just guessing: if Google Chrome is like most other cross-platform software, it comes packaged with many of its own libraries on Windows, but on Linux it relies on shared libraries. RHEL tends to contain older versions of libraries with the implication that older means more stable, so maybe some non-essential feature in the latest Chrome had to be disabled and it popped up that warning. I know I had a lot of fun messing around trying to build chromium on RHEL5, which came with gcc 4.1.4 when the build required 4.2+.

Unless it's just detecting the version string or something, in which case this is indeed quite lame.

Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet!

[ZorinLynx]

I'm of the firm opinion that most Linux server should package its own shared libraries. Especially when those libraries differ between distros or are updated often with non-backwards compatible changes.

It's frustrating that you often can't use older software on newer Linux systems due to API compatibility issues. Meanwhile, you can run Windows software going all the way back to the 90s.

Macs also suffer from this lack of being able to run really ancient software, but for a more understandable reason: Multiple major system architecture changes over the years.

Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet!

[anagama]

To put this into a stupid slashdot car analogy, what this guy is saying is that he drives a left hand drive stick shift at work, may even have a left hand drive stick shift at work for testing, and when he gets home, he uses a left hand drive stick shift too so that his work life is easier.

Now, if he drove an automatic at work but a stick at home, he mind find himself accidentally slamming on the brakes when coming to a stop (muscle memory clutch foot coupled with an oddly wide brake pedal (that's breaks and petals if you want to troll a spelling nazi)). Or, if he drove a right hand drive MG at home, he might end up making a crazy turn into oncoming traffic at work with their left hand drive cars.

Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet!

[bill_mcgonigle]

This is almost certainly the result of wanting some latest-and-greatest feature

That's the supposition, but let's hear it - what this feature that's in linux right now that wasn't there a couple years ago that Chrome needs? I guess the next Chromium build will make this clear (and I suspect an easy workaround will be had).

It seems more likely that somebody on the Chrome team got a hair across his ass about Redhat and with the frenetic pace of Chrome releases he was able to convince the whole team that they needed to drop support.

Happy to be proven wrong.

Re:Go where?

[h4rr4r]

Why would you be running RHEL on something that you use to browse the web?

Either it is a server and does not have X installed or it is a desktop and RHEL would be a PITA since it has so little software in the repos.

Re:Why would you need a web browser on a server?

[h4rr4r]

Then use Debian. Solves both problems.

Re:Why would you need a web browser on a server?

[betterunixthanunix]

Does Debian stable promise a 7 year support cycle? When last I checked, Debian stable releases will only be supported for three years, but I am not really a Debian user some perhaps someone can correct me.

What I have trouble understanding is why you are so dismissive of the idea that someone would run RHEL on a workstation. I see a lot of researchers do it, and they all say essentially the same thing I said: they lack the time needed to upgrade frequently and new features are less important than stability. Debian stable may deliver that, but so does RHEL; what exactly do you think makes Debian better for workstations than RHEL?

They're just pushing costs onto their customers

[guanxi]

Vendors don't want to the cost of supporting your platform, so they drop you. To avoid any responsibility, they simply add an error message blaming the user: "Your platform is obsolete." (I guess it's my problem now!) Many users are uniformed or credulous enough to believe it.

Many 'cloud' vendors are going this way; they've simply ignored their commitment to support their users and make the users do the work of supporting vendors (via upgrades and installations). I suspect it's because many users are consumers, aren't aware the vendors have this obligation, and take the 'error' messages at face value.

Worse, I see it in business situations. For example, cloud vendors we pay say that the current Firefox ESR is obsolete, or that we need to deploy browser upgrades office-wide every 5 weeks -- it does nothing for our bottom line, we'd just be doing it to please them.

There needs to be some push-back. We have no reason to absorb these costs.

Re:Go where?

[Tubal-Cain]

RHEL is used for hardened unix workstations, too. RHEL5 is the only enterprise linux distro I know of worth using with FIPS 140-2 and DoD APL certification, meaning that it's the only option for military workstations other than Windows.

And you're allowed to install third-party software in that situation?

Re:Does this apply to Windows

[Sockatume]

Yes, I dare say it's simple mathematics. If the number of users of an OS, multiplied by the Chrome browser share of that OS, multiplied by the revenue per Chrome user on that OS, is less than the cost of continued support, then it's a simple decision to discontinue support.