Re: [twuug] Expiring Distros

["Anthony Abby" <anthonyabby@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

S. Bergeron said:
> Blah blah blah blah.
>
> It's okay to EOL software!  Does it matter that your distro expired if
> a) you downloaded and got no support anyway, or b) bought a box, and had
> only a fixed amount of time for support?
>
> If you're running an old distro on an important machine, it's time to
> upgrade.  If it's a machine behind a firewall, or not connected to the
> internet, why upgrade it?  I will concede that the rpm distros are tough
> to upgrade to a new version sometimes.  If you have concerns about that,
> try Debian.  Unless you want to upgrade the kernel, you don't even need
> a reboot for a dist-upgrade (3.0 still supports Linux 2.0.x). ----
> S. Bergeron, smbergeron@bigfoot.com
> http://members.cox.net/smbergeron/

Sure it's okay to EOL software.  But NOT in 12 months!  That's both
ridiculous and stupid.  I'm groaning over having to physically upgrade 4
servers now, but can you imagine large corporations or even mid-size
companies with Linux server farms... 50, 100, 200 servers?  Havign to
upgrade each of them yearly?  No fricken way!  Too many things can go
wrong during an upgrade install, as we all know.. not to mention it takes
the server out of the loop for whatever length of time it takes to
upgrade.

I'm in Mark's camp in that I like to perform a fresh install each time. 
Saves all the heartaches and groans than can happen during an upgrade
install.  But that leaves you a lot of configuring on each machine
afterward!  That's a pain in the ass!  And to have to do it every year?

Performing security updates are relatively painless and easy to perform...
but a total system upgrade is something a step above that.  Did I mention
this is stupid?  Well let me say this again.. it's stupid!

Mandrake did this because Red Hat did it.  If everyone is going to play
follow the leader here, there is a good chance that the Linux adoption
will slow down IMO.  ZDNet ran an article 1-2 weeks ago regarding their
server farm.. how until a few months ago they were still running Redhat
6.5.. and gave some pretty good reasons why they were not prepared to
upgrade to a more current version of Redhat prior to.  So how can we
expect businesses to do that when they probably operate under the same
problems as ZDNet?

It's been mentioned in here before that this isn't a big deal.. well it is
a big deal actually, and it starts with the ridiculously short release
cycles.. 2 or 3 releases a year is way too many and is part of what's
driving this EOL cycle problem.  Slow down the releases to no more than 1
a year, then support your product for 2-3 years!  You EOL your product
after 12 months, not everyone is going to be in a position to upgrade...
so they're not going to get security fixes for software they're going to
continue to run.  That's the problem.. you're going to have more unsecure
machines on the Internet!  Like we need any more of those huh?  And not
everyone is in a position to hire a software developer to write the
updates, or do them in house either.

Maybe I should just switch all my servers to FreeBSD and say the hell with
it?


--
Anthony Abby - http://www.aplusdata.com
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