On Sun, 2003-08-17 at 09:44, Austin Godber wrote:
> Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> > Does Debian really support old Debian releases? For example, Potato was
> > supported for a long time. But as of June 30, it is now unsupported.
> > 
> > Debian also has had problems with upgrading from old versions to new
> > versions. It is getting a lot better now. (I should rephrase that:
> > Debian offers the most reliable and easiest package upgrade mechanism I
> > have used.) But over the past 6+ years of using Debian, I have spent a lot
> > of time manually updating versions of apt-get, dpkg (including having to
> > revert to older versions), et cetera, so the upgrades would work
> > correctly.
> > 
> > (Another example is OpenBSD: it has a consistent release every six months
> > and then the two releases previous -- one year old -- version becomes
> > dead.)
> > 
> > Having an end of life of old versions is definitely a good idea.
> > Developers (volunteers) should spend their time on new or recent code, in
> > my opinion.
> > 
> > Also, if the end-of-life'd Red Hat is really good, of course, someone
> > could spend their time keeping it alive and up-to-date (and fork a new
> > project/distro out of it). But it doesn't really seem worth it.
> 
> I am not saying I blame RedHat or anything.  Surely products have to have an 
> EOL, but when RH9 came out its EOL was only tenish months away.  That week I was 
> installing a web server and replacing a Win2k domain controller with a linux 
> box.  I had used redhat for about 5 or 6 years by then but when I realized that 
> the latest RedHat would end not even a year from when I was installing.  I 
> decided I didn't want to be forced to reinstall in less than a year.
> 
> As for upgrading, its always something I had avoided, I used a redhat upgrade 
> years ago and then decided that I would not attempt upgrades again.  So 
> reinstall the newer version was really the only option.  I have been using 
> dist-upgrade lately with much success (testing -> unstable), granted these boxes 
> are just desktops.
> 
> Backporting security patches is not a valuable use of my time at the moment. 
> Paying for security patches (well convenient ones at least) is not something I 
> am fond of doing.  So I will be avoiding it somewhat.  But, since RH is the 
> (well perhaps just one of the dominant) dominant commercial distribution I need 
> to keep up to date on it.  I haven't figured out how though.
> 
> Actually this give me an idea for a presentation.  Building RPMs and DEBs.  I 
> would like to see a presentation on that.  Or figure it out and give one.
> 
----
Actually if you read the pages that I linked - no release will have less
than a 12 month support cycle - I believe RH9 has a listed 14 month
cycle (EOL April-2004)

My experience with redhat upgrades has been excellent - YMMV

Craig