but ... [LWN.net]

but ...

Posted May 2, 2007 1:45 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
In reply to: The embedded Linux nightmare - an epilogue by drag
Parent article: The embedded Linux nightmare - an epilogue

Red Hat is still supporting RHEL 3 for their customers.

but ...

Posted May 2, 2007 21:18 UTC (Wed) by riel (subscriber, #3142) [Link]

RHEL releases only get select new hardware and feature support for the first 2 to 3 years after release. The rest of the 7 year support cycle the product will only get fixes for security problems and other really severe bugs. RHEL 2.1 is in that latter stage of the support cycle and RHEL 3 will be there soon.

We also have a policy of making sure that bugs our customers find in RHEL also get fixed in the upstream kernel. Preferably, they get fixed in the upstream kernel before the fix is put in RHEL.

Not only do we get the benefit of upstream review of the code change, but the bug is also automatically fixed when we come out with our next RHEL release. We only need to fix each bug once, and the upstream community gets the benefits of our work.

When dealing with a long product cycle and the faster upstream Linux development cycle there are ways to ensure that both your product and the upstream Linux community benefit.