RHEL 5.5 released [LWN.net]

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Mar 30, 2010 23:17 UTC (Tue) by lwkejrlej (guest, #64237) [Link]

While it's always nice to see a bit of hardware-related updates, the userspace in RHEL 5 is becoming worthy of an archaeological expedition.

It could be argued that the upcoming RHEL 6 will bring in a breath of fresh air, but that will merely delay the problem. RHEL 6's userspace will start to look crusty in 2-3 years. (And if one goes by the gap between RHEL releases, RHEL 7 won't be available until 2015).

The real problem is RH's almost total insistence on no software updates in terms of features (not taking into account things like Firefox). While one can certainly achieve a great deal of stability by only backporting security fixes, some of the new features that people crave require an update to the latest upstream version (e.g. bind).

Perhaps RH's notion of "stability" shouldn't necessairly be limited to backports only. How about regression-testing of newer upstream releases and providing a thoroughly tested and fixed newer packages, say every 2 years ? At the very least there should be an option to parallel install supported newer versions.

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Mar 31, 2010 0:14 UTC (Wed) by gurulabs (subscriber, #10753) [Link]

"The userspace in RHEL 5 is becoming worthy of an archaeological expedition"

Well, that sorta of the point of RHEL.

"It could be argued that the upcoming RHEL 6 will bring in a breath of fresh air, but that will merely delay the problem. RHEL 6's userspace will start to look crusty in 2-3 years. (And if one goes by the gap between RHEL releases, RHEL 7 won't be available until 2015)."

They could improve things by getting closer to the originally intended 18-24 month release cycle.

"At the very least there should be an option to parallel install supported newer versions."

Well, they did exactly that with Samba and FreeRadius in RHEL5.5.

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Mar 31, 2010 0:19 UTC (Wed) by gbailey (guest, #58) [Link]

Completely agreed.

It's getting more and more difficult to run things like a recent subversion repository, PHP applications, python applications, etc. with the versions we got with 2007-vintage RHEL 5.

At least with CentOS, that's probably one of the more commonly asked questions (other than "When will CentOS 5.5 be out?") -- where to find modern PHP and MySQL builds, etc.

Maybe the decision to put PostgreSQL v8.4 in RHEL 5.5 is a sign of things to come? They now have updated, replacement versions of both PostgreSQL and samba...

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Mar 31, 2010 1:56 UTC (Wed) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

If you read the release notes, you see that they actually do this with a few packages -- postgreSQL 8.4 being one that I'm personally glad for. I imagine it's there because enough, or significant enough, paying customers asked for it.

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Mar 31, 2010 6:24 UTC (Wed) by airlied (guest, #9104) [Link]

You should contact your RHEL sales rep or supplier and ask for the features you want, granted at this point RHEL6 might happen prior to that happening.

If you are only consuming via CentOS, I've no idea why you think Red Hat should listening to someone who isn't even a customer. Community needs are served via Fedora.

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Mar 31, 2010 13:43 UTC (Wed) by andrel (subscriber, #5166) [Link]

In large organizations it is not always clear how to get feedback through to our RHEL sales rep. Easier to install Ubuntu, forgoing support from the IT group, then to use RHEL and work-around the antique user space.

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Mar 31, 2010 13:58 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

There are other connected repos that cover a bunch of things.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL
http://iuscommunity.org/
http://rpmfusion.org

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Mar 31, 2010 13:09 UTC (Wed) by miguelzinho (subscriber, #40535) [Link]

The age of the packages is not a real problem to me, the small number of packages is. I hope RHEL 6 comes with much more packages. It is really a PITA to usually rely on third party repos.

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Mar 31, 2010 22:43 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Does EPEL satisfy your needs? If not, are there specific packages you are
looking for that is not in either repo?

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Mar 31, 2010 23:58 UTC (Wed) by miguelzinho (subscriber, #40535) [Link]

It kinda does, but as good as EPEL might be (I've faced dependency problems with EPEL packages before, imapsync comes to mind), it is still a third party repo: there is no security announce list and a IMHO too flexible policy about updates [1].

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/GuidelinesAndPolicies#...

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Apr 1, 2010 1:00 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Enterprise distributions are by nature only going to support a core set of
packages and rest is going to go into a community supported repository.

You can subscribe to and filter out security updates easily using mailman
topics.

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/epel-package-ann...

What do you consider "too flexible" about the update policy?

RHEL 5.5 released

Posted Apr 1, 2010 15:42 UTC (Thu) by ESRI (subscriber, #52806) [Link]

The policy is definitely evolving. A community driven repo doesn't have the resources necessarily to continuously backport fixes and maintain ABI sbability. It can be a goal, but due to that lack of resources, there are going to be cases where it's impractical to follow...

That could improve over time of course...