CentOS 5, RHEL 5.6, and security updates [LWN.net]

CentOS 5, RHEL 5.6, and security updates

Posted Feb 24, 2011 4:20 UTC (Thu) by ESRI (guest, #52806)
In reply to: CentOS 5, RHEL 5.6, and security updates by dowdle
Parent article: CentOS 5, RHEL 5.6, and security updates

Oracle released Unbreakable Linux 5.6 on January 20th. Scientific Linux has a rolling 5.6 release (as they do with 6.0).

Obviously, Oracle has a lot of resources to devote to their releases, and I'm not really sure how SL does their work, but I believe they have some financial backing (full-time people?).

For CentOS it seems to be a manpower shortage... how to solve it remains to be seen (it's not easy to become a member of the "core" group where likely the most help is needed). I think it might not hurt them to recruit or bring in someone who isn't focused as much on doing the technical work, but can instead target documenting, organizing and publicizing work flows and procedures and making a concerted effort to allow more people to participate and help CentOS out during the point release period. This way things don't necessarily slow down while Johnny or Karanbir are having to deal with restless mailing list complainers or issues at $DAYJOB.

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CentOS 5, RHEL 5.6, and security updates

Posted Feb 24, 2011 4:43 UTC (Thu) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

Checking SL's front page it says their latest releases are 5.5 and 4.8. Checking their FTP directories, it says 5.5 and 4.8. The document you linked to says, "Linux ALPHA" so I'm guessing it is an alpha release just like they have released test releases for 6. With CentOS 5.6 supposedly only a few days away... that seems more advanced than an alpha release but I don't want to count those chickens before they are hatched.

Oracle was my bad. I hadn't seen their 5.6 release noted on distrowatch.com and didn't hunt down the info on their site.

CentOS 5, RHEL 5.6, and security updates

Posted Feb 24, 2011 14:35 UTC (Thu) by ESRI (guest, #52806) [Link]

I actually haven't tried SL's 5.6 "alpha", so I don't know how far along it is (I have been using their 6.0 rolling release for a few weeks now without problems). They do seem to make their dog food available immediately for the masses to consume whereas CentOS uses a more private QA process (no public release until final).

Note -- I don't mean any of this as a slight to the CentOS crew. I agree with you -- if you need quicker turnaround on any of this, you should be paying RH money.