Red Hat Linux 9.0 announced [LWN.net]

Red Hat Linux 9.0 announced

Posted Mar 25, 2003 3:37 UTC (Tue) by Baylink (subscriber, #755)
Parent article: Red Hat Linux 9 announced

This came, among other places, from a copy I submitted; my editorial comment was that I was pretty damned tired of people ceding version numbering from the engineering department to the marketroids; this may be the beginning of the End for RH...

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Red Hat Linux 9.0 announced

Posted Mar 25, 2003 4:28 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

this may be the beginning of the End for RH...

Yeah, a lot of companies go out of business by selecting bad version numbers. ;-)

Red Hat Linux 9.0 announced

Posted Mar 25, 2003 7:01 UTC (Tue) by patsoffice.com (guest, #4605) [Link]

my editorial comment was that I was pretty damned tired of people ceding version numbering from the engineering department to the marketroids;

I don't understand why people have difficulty understanding the version numbering of RedHat Linux. If binary compatability is broken it's a major version number bump. This has nothing to do with marketing (although I'm sure there are market perception benefits.) The fact that this is a major version bump should not be a suprise to anybody. RedHat has had 3 (IIRC) phoebe betas and if you've run any of them, you know that binary compatability is not a given with the new threading model they're using.

Red Hat Linux 9.0 announced

Posted Mar 25, 2003 8:54 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

However, glibc was updated to version 2.3.2 in Red Hat 8, so there may be some compatibility between patched Red Hat 8 and unpatched Red Hat 9 after all :-)

Red Hat Linux 9.0 announced

Posted Mar 25, 2003 15:45 UTC (Tue) by bkw1a (subscriber, #4101) [Link]

If binary compatability is broken it's a major version number bump.

Personally, that's the main reason I'm concerned about this. I maintain a lot of Red Hat computers (over 100), using a standard configuration. Ever since version 4.2, I've been developing a new configuration whenever a new *.2 version comes out, then installing it on new machines and upgrading old ones. I've got a nightly update scheme that lets me easily push out updates, but when a major upgrade comes along, it means actually laying hands on each of the machines and spending at least an hour with it. (The hardware varies widely, from desktop machines with various sound/video/whatever cards to several small clusters of headless machines.)

Even just developing and testing a new build is something I spend months on. I aim for security and stability, and so far things have gone pretty well.

The problem is, Red Hat is releasing major versions more and more rapidly, and each version is significantly bigger (requiring more head-scratching while developing the build, and more time to install).

I'm currently just finishing up an upgrade from a build based on 6.2 to one based on 7.2. I was hoping to be stable there until 8.2 came out. Now it looks like there will never be an 8.2.

Recently, I've been seriously considering a switch to Debian, because of the apparent ease of upgrades. I'd love to be able to test a new major version, then deploy it remotely without touching the machines. My main concern is with security updates. Red Hat does a terrific job with security patches, in general. To keep as up-to-date as I need to be, I'd need to Debian-unstable, but I'm worried about the speed with which security updates are released for the unstable tree. Does anyone have any advice about this?

Red Hat Linux 9.0 announced

Posted Mar 25, 2003 16:09 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

The Debian install is not as simple as the RedHat install. You're likely to spend a bit more time futzing around with getting specific hardware working, although if you're a long time Linux user that's not all that big a deal. (It's all still fully supported-- it's just that the RedHat installer does a very good job of automatically recognizing everything, whereas I've found that the Debian installer still leaves you needing to tell it the name of your video card, and perhaps configuring modules to load the right module for your sound card.) It's not a huge step back, but that is one drawback.

Once you have it going, though, it's very nice. I switched from RedHat to Debian after trying RedHat 8 and being horrified to figure out that RPM had a bug... I couldn't install the updates without RPM dying partway through. With Debian, apt-get hasn't given me trouble. I run several machines on stable, and one on testing, and all have been fine.

I don't know that Debian will maintain support for an "old" stable version much longer than RedHat does. I think that after a new stable version comes out for Debian, you have to worry about security updates drying up in a matter of half a year or (at most) a year. On the other hand, stable Debian releases come out very infrequently, so you won't need to perform the major upgrade cycle nearly as often. And, unlike RedHat x.0-- which wise people avoid, waiting for x.2-- by the time a Debian stable release comes out it really is stable, and you can be confident upgrading to it.

Making that kind of switch won't be all win, but for what you're doing, you may find it better.

The downside of the slow pace of major Debian releases is that after a while, Debian stable doesn't support any recent hardware.... If it's 1.5-2 years between major stable releases, then by the time the last release is long in the tooth, any recent video cards won't be supported by the version of X in the last stable release, etc. There are ways around this by pulling software from Debian testing, but of course if you're running a whole bunch of systems its easier if you don't have to do too much individual futzing around, and can keep everything just running on the stable release. Unless you buy machines all the time, though, this may not be that serious of a worry.

-Rob

Red Hat Linux 9.0 announced

Posted Mar 25, 2003 16:29 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

The "horrible" rpm bug has been fixed. Upgrade to RPM 4.1.1. The errata has not been issued yet. I guess Red Hat is testing RPM 4.1.1 really hard, as they cannot afford to release an incomplete fix.

Red Hat Linux 9.0 announced

Posted Mar 25, 2003 16:22 UTC (Tue) by ksmathers (subscriber, #2353) [Link]

> If binary compatability is broken it's a major version number bump.

I believe it is for product differentiation. Redhat wants enterprises to buy their Enterprise Linux offering, which addresses exactly those concerns. Their regular Redhat Linux is moving to a cutting edge product to be more competitive with Mandrake, and more attractive to the hobbyist market.

Red Hat Linux 9.0 announced

Posted Mar 25, 2003 22:48 UTC (Tue) by dcarrera (guest, #9087) [Link]

Recently, I've been seriously considering a switch to Debian, because of the apparent ease of upgrades. [snip] My main concern is with security updates. [snip] To keep as up-to-date as I need to be, I'd need to Debian-unstable, but I'm worried about the speed with which security updates are released for the unstable tree. Does anyone have any advice about this?

Yes, try Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org). Gentoo is a source-based distribution inspired in part by Debian. It's Portage system works much like apt-get. The main difference is that Gentoo is designed to be bleeding-edge. There is no distribution that is as up-to-date as Gentoo.