Too short! [LWN.net]

Too short!

Posted Dec 31, 2002 12:41 UTC (Tue) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435)
In reply to: Too short! by AlanCox
Parent article: Red Hat errata policy updates and product end of life

True... We have at least one machine still happily running RH5.2, which
has been unsupported for ages, now... But, did that mean we're screwed,
and forced to upgrade? No, absolutely not... It just meant we couldn't
just look to RH to provide us with neatly packaged RPMs to keep stuff up
to date... We can still do the work ourselves, if necessary... At some
point, the effort of doing so may outweigh the effort of upgrading the
system, at which point we may do so... But, until then, there's nothing
wrong with happily chugging along with an ancient, unsupported system...

(Log in to post comments)

Too short!

Posted Dec 31, 2002 14:22 UTC (Tue) by jwharmanny (guest, #971) [Link]

The only real problem I see is security updates. Old distro's come with old packages. All major software (kernel, Apache, SSH, etc.) have several vulnerabilities which are only resolvable by upgrading the respective applications and libraries to newer versions. Upgrading the whole distro would be much easier then upgrading those major apps by hand.

Besides, would it be fair to expect a distributor to support software which is deprecated for a long time by their original authors?