Red Hat Announces Product EOL Calendar 543
BrunoC writes "Looks like Red Hat is getting a little Microsoftish and is quietly introducing its brand new 12-month-only Errata. Quoting The Reg: 'Red Hat's current death list EOLs RH 7.1-8.0 at the end of this year, while 6.2 and 7.0 get theirs as of the end of March.' You can read the whole article here." I don't see how this is "Microsoftish" -- the code Red Hat creates or includes is still GPL, and you can pay anyone willing to fix it. They're not required to support it forever :)
That's correct.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:That's correct.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Business desktops need to last a lot longer (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're trying to purchase a few dozen (much less a hundred or a thousand) desktop machines for corporate rollout, it's going to take you a few months to get the budget approved. Then you spend a month or two on the RFQ and RFPs, another month or so going through them, and another month or so finalizing the decision. Add on the order time, receiving time, and software installation/configuration time, and you're hitting 9-12 months before they're even hitting a user's desktop.
So you've got a good chance that by the time your users first turn on a RedHat desktop, the support has been dropped.
Congratulations, RedHat, you just knocked yourself out of competition for the corporate desktop. With Mandrake dead, that leaves SuSE as the only real contender for a corporate solution on the desktop.
On the server side, consider that it typically takes at least a year for third-party vendors to certify a distro as "supported" for their products. Sometimes it even matters -- Sybase 12.5 would only run on a certain patch level of RedHat 7.1 last time I tried it (Mandrake 8.1, 8.2, and SuSE 8.0 could not even prepare the storage space for the database without crashing, much less run a server.)
I know that most corps are going to have special contracts set up for support, but that doesn't help those of us on the development or consulting side of things who don't have the budget to pay for full AS licenses just to get a system that doesn't need to be rebuilt annually.
If I want to rebuild systems annually, I'll go back to Microsoft-based development -- there's more work supporting that junk anyhow.
I do buy full distros to support the vendors -- and end up spending far more on Linux distros per year than I ever did on Microsoft products as a result. I have RH 5.2, 6.2, 7.0, 7.1, Mandrake 7.2, 8.0, 8.1, SuSE 8.0 and 8.1 -- all full box sets at $75-100 each. Even when I don't install them, I buy kits just to help keep the companies I believe in afloat.
I sure don't appreciate RH trying to rip me off as payback. Even with RH normal pricing, who in their right mind is going to pay $150 for a full current release of RH, for which you only get a few months update support, vs. buying a generic copy of the disks for $20 plus shipping and paying less than $150 for a full year of RH update support? Such nonsense would be why RH 7.1 was the last distro of theirs I bought or installed -- I don't believe in their model anymore.
Re:Business desktops need to last a lot longer (Score:5, Insightful)
And their $150 box is probably going to go away, and there will just be the $40 box. You're better off paying $60 for a years worth of RHN and skipping the box set entirely anyways.
Anyways, I would doubt that someone who doesn't even follow the company, use their product, or "believe in their model" to care about any of this in the first place (of even do some research about what Red Hat *is* doing for big companies before spouting off).
Re:Business desktops need to last a lot longer (Score:3, Interesting)
You missed a key point: I'm a consultant. I have to support what clients are using, which is largely WinNT/2K/XP and RedHat's distribution of Linux. I cannot afford to pay their corporate level pricing because I am a self-emplyed individual, not a consulting group that can leverage and distribute the costs among the profits from several consultants in the field.
I follow a lot of products I don't believe in and don't use, because it's my job to stay informed about the marketplace and the products my clients are going to be asking about.
Most clients are not well informed. They've heard about Linux, they've heard about RedHat. They don't know enough to realize that because I work with a couple other distros on a daily basis I'll have no trouble working with RedHat -- they'll just see I don't run the specific older release of RedHat they have support for, and assume I can't do the job.
Why won't I be running their release?
Because I won't be able to afford to run the releases they're using, because I can't drop several thousand dollars to maintain multiple AS releases, even multibooting the same hardware. And without the corporate updates provided to AS, it won't be an option to just run outdated software -- I wouldn't be running the same patch levels, which means I wouldn't be able to replicate and isolate the software problems the client is having.
Not always because of different hardware (Score:4, Insightful)
Large clients (e.g. banks) have the clout to ensure that once they select a hardware platform with a large provider like IBM, Dell, or Compaq, they will continue to get identical hardware on subsequent orders, even after the regular consumer can no longer order the components.
The same applies to the software they run. End of life to a large corporation only means that the general public can't get support for the product and is forced to upgrade; corps keep getting support for as long as they are paying enough.
Most corps I've worked for are running software that no one would even think of buying or installing anywhere else. It's all about maintaining compatability, and lock-stepped upgrades of entire farms of corporate systems. Even applying a software patch for the OS requires regression testing of third-party and internally-developed software that the OS vendor often does not have access to.
The last large client I worked for takes about three months to determine if an OS patch can be rolled out. Until then, you live with the problems caused by the OS bug, even if that means getting paged every morning to restart servers, or that users are going to have to put up with periodic dead sessions.
Absolutely nothing is more important to a large corp than data integrity. Not the sanity of the support staff, the profit margins of the vendors, or the "improvements" of a newer OS release. Nothing is allowed to change that might risk the data, and making changes without proper verification and authorization is a firing offense -- no matter whether they eventualy apply the update you forced or not.
Re:That's correct.. (Score:5, Insightful)
So as more and more people get broadband and CD burners less and less people will contribute to a fine open source company and that is the "way it should be..."
This of course will kill open source companies but hey, that's the way it should be...
After all the open source companys give up because of people like you we will be forced to pay outragouse prices from Microsoft but hey, that's the way it should be...
Re:That's correct.. (Score:4, Insightful)
You probably should learn a lot more about the history of free software. The "open source companies" are a late development, and hardly as crucial to the survival and well-being of free software as your post would imply.
How is that a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Communism sucks for governments, but it works great for groups of people with a common goal!
That's right, kids...opensource is good for you. It lets you give your time to the group, or COMMUNE, and give back the results of your productivity to the masses for equal division! and the great thing about software is, that unlike the finite products that software corporations wish it to be, can be copied effortlessly countless times, with little distribution cost to anyone!
So let's all try a nice big glass of Communism today, and stop worrying about whether Capitalism is going to benefit from our pinko operating system!
but seriously, this whole copyright and software thing is just like the cold war all over again, except this time everyone who has actually researched their stuff realizes that there's far more atrocities on the pro-IP side than the commie rat bastards they want you all to think us OSS people are. I could say generic "when you support..." joke, but its no joke. thats why so many of us here on
Really. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:That's correct.. (Score:3, Funny)
Lifetime of a computer being 1500 years? Bah.. More like 1500 hours. Ok, yeah.. that's the obsolete marker, but still.. I mean, do you wait a lifetime before someone can leave their job? Nope! 30 years and they're obsolete. Kick 'em out the door! At least with a computer you don't have to pay a pension, bloody leeches!
You'll work for pennies to allow me to afford another plane! The 747 is just too small! Bonus? INGRATES! You work for the privilege of entering this building lackies! *whip crack* Row faster!!
Oh.. sorry.. Been going through job-withdrawal lately.
thats too bad (Score:2, Insightful)
xao
Re:thats too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
how about: 8/0 is obsolete in less than a year, but 8.1 isn't even out of beta yet!
Unlike Windows, Unix people are often used to running their machine for more than a year without a reboot. When you have to upgrade your OS more often than you would (otherwise) have to reboot it, there's something wrong with the EOL calendar.
My roommate (along with lots of other MS-bound friends) is still running win98. My box dual boots to '95. If this were done on the RH calendar, our OSs would have been EOL'd 5-7 years ago.
NOT going to replace their OS every year. OS boasts aside, things still break in the move. If I weren't a geek I'd have absolutely no interest in going through migration sickness every 10-14 months. As long as this calendar stands, there's no way that I can realisticly encourage friends and clients to move to RedHat. For some of them, it's going to take more than a year to convince them to change over. Providing a moving target simply makes things that much harder.
Can you understand the consternation of a non-geek friend running 7.1 being forced to move to 8.0 (the 8.1 beta refused to recognize his new HD) -- knowing that the OS is going to be obsolete by the end of the year? good reason to go ballistic.
This is one big step away from getting a solid foothold on the desktop.
Re:Here's Your Answer (Score:4, Insightful)
MS requiring an upgrade is forced because no one else can support or fix bugs or security issues on old Windows or MS-DOS versions.
Red Hat is just stopping their own support for old versions, but anyone else can fix their bugs or security issues, and support it, because they have the source code to it.
No one's forcing an upgrade on Red Hat's half.
Re:Here's Your Answer (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Here's Your Answer (Score:3, Insightful)
I also don't think that a year is unreasonable for RedHat to support an OS for...especially considering we're talking about Open Source products here. Really, RHN/up2date is nice, but not a necessary component.
There are two things to consider here.
1) Home users: who cares if they have to D/L a new ISO every 12 months...sure, it'll cut into the pr0n allowance, but no biggie (sorry dial-up users, you'll have to shell out $5+shipping for a disc).
2) Corporate users: upgrading servers is a pain. It's done as little as possible. Open Source is great in this situation. Upgrade on a package by package basis. It's fairly easy to build an RPM...especially when a lot of projects include the
And to top it off, corporations should be using Advanced Server anyway, or have the $$ to pay RedHat for some on-the-side support deal...this happens all the time.
Even a non-RedHat supported RedHat is still a very maintainable system.
-Ben
M$ (Score:4, Funny)
Also, cut it out with the "M$" crap.
Microsoft built its early business on porting its BASIC programming language interpreter to several 8-bit microcomputer platforms and licensing it to the computer manufacturers. In line-numbered BASIC, the name of a variable of type string ends in '$'. A valid program in "Applesoft BASIC" (the BASIC interpreter in the Apple II ROM, developed by Microsoft):
I find using a BASIC expression to refer to a BASIC vendor just as valid as using the pattern *n?x to refer to a family of operating systems whose shells recognize the name of the operating system in that glob pattern.
Re:Here's Your Answer (Score:3, Insightful)
I am by no means a fan of RedHat (Slack for me), but I think that they have a legit and smart model here. You're essentially buying support when you buy their (reasonably priced) distribution. If you don't like it, then don't pay them. The ISOs will still be there tomorrow. And even then, the source code is there for the consumers to improve upon.
It isn't quite the same thing as Microsoft's forcing users to upgrade closed-source products with no new features (Office comes to mind), but even MS has to make a buck. Weather or not I agree with the means by which they do so is another story.
Overall, I don't feel that it is fair of The Register to present things this way. They've lost a lot of respect from me.
Er... (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoftish ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not recall Redhat supporting any of their distro releases for 8 years.
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:2)
RedHat founded in 1994, so yes. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:2, Troll)
Yeah, it didn't take them 8 years to fix all the problems & security issues.
Not true. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not true. (Score:3, Insightful)
And for the record, I'm not a Red Hat user, and I don't particularly care for their recent versions. I said nothing of business model, and I said nothing of people who have solely downloaded. If you see something wrong with someone downloading a newer version of something the person already has paid for an older version of, you may as well go ahead and join the BSA.
I, as a Gentoo user, do not see the need for commercial linuxOS companies to create the OS. If IBM wants to make one to put on their hardware, or to provide services for, fine. but don't knock Red Hat for trying. They didn't get to number 1 by charging or by licensing one fee per desk. They got there by making linux palatable by the more adventurous of the masses. If the days of commercial linuxOS creating-selling are numbered, so be it. Lack of 'sales' hasn't killed Debian as far as I know...
Re:Not true. (Score:3)
Re:Not true. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it just means that in an open source-only world, if I needed software that I didnt want to write myself, I'd be dependent on the whims and interests of others. If my business depended on my software, I much rather contract with someone who I know will stay interested because I'm paying them.
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:4, Informative)
Win2000 is March 31, 2008
WinXP Pro is Dec 31, 2009
WinXP Home is Dec, 31 2007
Read more about the Microsoft Desktop Product life cycle Here [microsoft.com].
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:3, Funny)
[rereads] Oh, Microsoft-ish?
Never mind.
Belloc
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Amen, and this is the argument I threw at my RH account rep. We currently pay a few grand annually for RHN enterprise and I am very happy with it. But if RHN stops offering errata after just one year, it's utility goes away from me and hence I'll stop paying for it. I'd bet others in my shoes will do the same thing. I'll either have to switch to another distro or start hand patching systems or just switch to Windows Server (well, hmm, I'm not *THAT* pissed off... :)
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Micrsosoftish ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now say that RH maintained an particular release. Over time they fix reported bugs, they update software when there are security problems, they update software for extra features and functionality, and so on..
Well isn't that just an upgrade?
However, a year is too short a time I agree. But 10 years for a server? That would require them to take every bug fix and back port it to probably 20-30 distro version. It would become totally unmanagable.
I feel for redhat and see the problem they are in. They have a very very large code base to maintain.
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Given the fact that Microsoft just STRONG-ARMED all their corporate buyers into upgrading every license in the company, WHETHER OR NOT THEY USE THE NEWER VERSIONS of their products, I can't see how ANYONE in their RIGHT MIND would accuse RedHat of being like Microsoft with this move.
I'm waiting for RedHat to *require* me to pay to download (or buy a boxed set of) their distribution. I want to give them money, but I personally haven't parted with it, and won't until they make me, but then I'll be fine with that. They deserve to get some money out of me. But I must admit that I would really like to see a 1.5 year support life for even the basic product.
Re:Microsoftish ? (Score:4, Insightful)
tired of calls like this: (Score:5, Funny)
RH person - "What version are you using?"
noob - "Uhh... version 5.0 I think..."
RH person - "FUCK OFF AND UPDATE YOUR SHIT MAN!!! IT IS FREE!!!"
Re:tired of calls like this: (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever planned then executed that plan to update 10,000 or so computers? Licensing costs are not the big issue.
When the OS is free, what can you complain about? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole concept behind Open Source is that selling service is the way to make money. However, when no one is paying you and demanding your services even still, there's got to come a point where you realize that your "customers" are simply taking advantage of you.
Bravo, Redhat. For finally realizing that money doesn't come from beggars. Now maybe my RHAT shares will be a shit [yahoo.com].
Re:When the OS is free, what can you complain abou (Score:5, Informative)
Re:When the OS is free, what can you complain abou (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't? Just guessing here, but I bet you use linux in your dormroom or your bedroom.
In April, a co-worker and I upgraded roughly 15-20 machines from RH 6.1 to RH 7.2. We don't have IT staff as such, we are both scientists in academia who happen to know a fair bit about system admin. We work in an academic environment.
Our 15-20 machines are all slightly different. They all needed to have certain config files backed up and restored. They each have a different person with different skills and different requirements sitting in front of them. So, how did it go?
The first machine probably took 2 hours of fairly close attention to install. Everything had to be documented so we could reproduce it. Then, I used that machine for a few weeks, noting what else needed to be tweaked and installed. Then, one by one, we installed the OS on the other machines. This process took about 2-3 weeks and took say 30-60 minutes of real work per machine including the updates. Then the users got a hold of them. One person notices that program X doesn't exist anymore. Another notices Y doesn't exist. Someone else notices that xvscan doesn't work, so we have to figure out how to use xsane. This continues for a month or more, each time requiring one of us to install more software on the systems and test it out. The first machine (mine) is determined to be completely out of sync due to different choices in the installer, so it is done from scratch.
I highly doubt this is a "rare case." These are just desktop machines, not even mission critical servers (although one was a web/db server).
I sure don't look forward to repeating this excercise in January 2004. If Red Hat's options are a 12-month upgrade cycle or $800/machine, we'll find some other company. But, their promised corporate desktop may be the answer for us if its priced reasonably.
Re:When the OS is free, what can you complain abou (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When the OS is free, what can you complain abou (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps in the real world of beanie-wearing community college graduates, yes. But in the real corporate world, there are testbed servers on which to test upgrades, patches, etc. before rolling them onto the production servers. Often times there are also redundant servers which can be taken down, upgraded, tested, and put live one at a time.
Further - there's no requirement to upgrade once/week, but at the very least keep packages less than one year stale. The Internet as a whole got a kick in the goodies this past weekend by sysadmins who wouldn't patch a software vulnerability that was more than 7 months old (and by the network admins who allowed access to the servers via the public Internet, but I digress).
If you haven't upgraded your Linux systems in 6-12 months, I'd love for you to send me your IP address(es), because I'd like to send you a few packets pertaining to;
Out in the "real world", systems administrators apply patches, fixes, and upgrades to their software regularly to avoid being used as a staging ground for one of our recent many DDoS attacks, or having their corporate data stolen.
It's the lazy, incompetent, certifications-are-king sysadmins out there who give us a bad name. They're the ones who adopt the theory that applying updates is "too hard", and claim that "things could break" which they use to justify their ignorance of best-practises security.
If your company's assets are riding on IT software and you're having trouble keeping up-to-date, talk to your vendor and ask for help. Have them justify the money you fork over to them every year and do something for you. If RedHat is your vendor, ask them for assistance in migrating your server farm from 6.0 to 8.0. If they won't give it to you, inform them that you'll find another vendor, and that you won't be spending $30k on another support contract. If you've already spent it, contact your lawyer.
"Real World" does not, nor should it ever be confused with or used to justify laziness, ignorance, or apathy. It's thinking like that that got us into our present state of dissaray.
Re:Its apps, not the OS, that should be upgraded (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux distributions are a collection of three primary factors, and a number of secondary. The primary factors are;
Emphasis on #2. Like most other distributions, RedHat maintains their own custom packages for their software applications. That's why each distribution will in-turn address security updates on the likes of BUGTRAQ; each of them is distributing their own RPMs/DEBs/TGZz/etc. to fix the problem. That's what RedHat is ceasing; support for their custom software RPMs.
You'll always be able to download/install the latest kernel, be it via RPM, SRPM, or sources from kernel.org; I don't believe that's an issue in the slightest.
Once you've upgraded all the packages to their current level, all that's left are the few packages (Base layout, package management interface, etc.) that comprise the "OS". If you require support but RedHat declines it on this basis, simply apply the updates and call them back.
The high school I worked for had testbed systems. They're just common-sense. When you're deploying mission-critical, or even just important updates to a system, it's always adviseable to test it first. Be it a server upgrade or a workstation image, it's just good business practise to test it before you put it live.
The advantages to spending the money preemptively and having a solid software update policy in effect will save the company countless dollars, man-hours and heartache when and if that policy would have helped the most - in the case of an intrustion or major software meltdown.
BTW - Even when RedHat christens a newly released RPM that upgrades an existing package, it should be standard policy to test this upgrade on a testbed before putting it live, so the extended product life cycle won't do you any good anyways; damage done is money lost.
A testbed server doesn't have to be some kind of elaborate, highly-involved process. Essentially, you keep a 'good' image of the install base, else simply a mirror of the production server. Install this on a similar hardware platform (ideally a machine with the same hardware configuration), apply the upgrade(s), and test the robustness of the new system. Re-boot it and ensure sofware comes up. Watch for panics. Put some load on it and make sure the services don't fall over. (This, of course, will be done on a case-by-case basis, as all servers face different load scenarios). That done, migrate the changes to the production server, monitor it closely for a few days (even if you just watch Big Brother or a couple of log tails on your desktop), and call it a day.
I maintained upwards of ten separate workstation images and five servers using this methodology and virtually never had problems with any production setups as a result. We continued to stun the IBM tech reps (with whom we had a support contract, but that's a story for another day) when they'd come to the school and find themselves with absolutely nothing to do. They'd start to ask us about a problem they'd seen at other schools and we'd stop them with "Fixed that three weeks ago before it became a problem."
I wonder.. (Score:5, Interesting)
ah hey read it again (Score:2, Informative)
Its chaging its free upport policies..
The paid support still covers said systems, duh!
Try reading something before you blindly post liek some micrsoftie
Re:ah hey read it again (Score:5, Informative)
Not true, no errata for rh 8.0 and earlier after end of this year, even if you shell out thousands for RHN a year like we do. I confirmed this with my account rep.
There *is* advanced server, but that's at least $800/year/server. A big difference... And even that is only for three years.
Re:I wonder.. (Score:2)
Laziness is no excuse.
Microsoftish? (Score:2)
Yeah, I agree, I fail to see how this is really "microsoftish", I mean, sure, you're loosing some support, but the GPL doesn't guarantee they'd always support it.
Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
OMG! (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, seriously. End-of-lifing a product is just a plain good idea, whether you're talking about open source, closed source, or something that isn't even computer software. In the real world, it costs way too much to keep a support infrastructure in place for a product that is only being used by a small amount of the population due to its having become "obsolete" (even if only as a marketing matter). While it sucks to be one of the people who still uses the product and doesn't want to upgrade, there's really no alternative but to cut people off eventually.
Re:OMG! (Score:2)
Business doesn't like this type of instability. Trust me, this won't do good for Linux in the enterprise...
I have some redhat boxes hooked up to an EMC SAN. They only certify their drivers for certain releases, and it takes them about a year to certify. Currently, the latest RH certified is 7.2 for example.
Why support obsolete products? (Score:4, Insightful)
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe that's because you don't have to admin anything important. An annual upgrade treadmill is a huge burden on IT staffs that have to prototype and test rollouts for upgrades. There is a reasonable support timeframe between zero and indefinite and one year is not it.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Twivel
Microsoftish? (Score:2, Interesting)
And its a bit different with redhat, most of the components of old redhat releases are current projects still making releases, theres nothing stopping you from doing the upgrade yourself, chances are if you cant you can prob get your slightly geekier friend to compile and rpm it for you. With windows, think someone is still working on the windows 3.1 version of the networking components?
I spy with my "Microsoft" eye.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the more important question is. Why is everyone so gung ho about seeing every RH action as "Microsoftish"? As many have already argued RH couldn't be another Microsoft. Has Microsoft scared us all so bad that we jump at the slightest movement by a commercial company? What about all the other commercial companies out there? Aren't they doing something "Microsoftish", or is it just RedHat?
Re:I spy with my "Microsoft" eye.... (Score:2)
Lifespan of servers? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's nice to know that when you get your shiny new 8-way Xeon with untold amounts of RAM you'll be able to leave it in production for the span of its warranty without having to worry about re-installing due to the OS release on it being EOL'ed.
Where this falls down is twofold: 1) servers are still useful well past three years, whether they're warrantied or not, and 2) some vendors for extra money will extend warranties up to five or so years (my employer has started buying Dell boxes with five year warranties pretty much as standard).
Re:Lifespan of servers? (Score:2)
I buy my servers 1 year warranty. The bigger problem I have is the developers put on custom builds of everything and their documentation is shady. So, it's just another excuse to slap their knuckles and build the server in a way that is easier to upgrade.
Then, when they want some new feature (last week's adventure was netatalk compatible with OSX), I'm not going to say "Goddammit this is fucking ancient! What the hell am I going to do with this?!?!?!?!"
ah, but anyway.
--mandi
I spy a troll! (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, Timothy, that was cheap :-) Of course it's "Microsoft-ish" because it forces companies who want support to upgrade. Yeah, sure, you still have the source code, but in a company that doesn't mean anything if you're not getting support. Half the reason why Red Hat is so popular (over the "free beer" Linuxes like Debian) is because when a company puts it on their systems, they can be assured of getting professional support. This is really important for the PHBs of the world - they don't want to hire some in-house hacker with tattoos and spikey hair to "support" their installation.
Of course, even though it is Microsoft-ish, i don't think that's a bad thing. Forcing your clients to upgrade is better all round - it's better for the economy because it's creating sales which lead to more R&D spending, plus you can ensure your clients are running the latest version which should cut down on the bugginess or flakiness of their software. If Microsoft had had a more aggressive "push upgrades onto the client" scheme, all the internet problems we saw last week wouldn't've happened, because everyone would've been running patched SQL Servers anyway.
Microsoftish (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess Red Hat is being microsoftish by trying to make a profit (maybe someday), or trying to keep the majority of it's users somewhere in the middle of the bell-curve (you spend 90% of your time supporting 10% of your users who refuse to upgrade), or maybe it's the windowsupdate.com like ability to patch over the web.
I think they're more Microsoftish than you may think, and I say 'right on!'.
I don't like this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, 7.1 is rather old, but discontinuing support for 8.0?
IMO professional distros should always support their latest, and their last major release, so in RedHats case 8.x and 7.3, and not drop support for 7.3 until 9.0 is out.
After all, support is, like, the thing theiy make money in the first place!
Re:I don't like this. (Score:3, Insightful)
The unwritten rule of RH is that if you want stability, you use the last point release. This used to be x.2, but 7.3 complicated things a little. x.0 is regarded as a technology preview ("hey, we put lots of exciting new stuff in, and we're still working out what we broke!") and x.1 as a public beta ("uh, we think we've fixed all the howlers in x.0 now. Try this and let us know if there's anything that needs to be fixed in x.2").
--
Duration of Support issues (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing that comes to mind was the discussion the BMW exec had with a number of attendess at a tech conference. He point out that they are required to support cars with parts, etc for Ten Years. And the obvious question was how may people there were running things that were ten yerars old, nevermind able to get support for it.
Now we get to End of Life issues. How long should software be supported? Ten years for something like software, Is this even reasonable? It's important for the embedded market, at least.
Not a fair comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I'd rather see them drop the old support in favor of providing a higher level of service to the paying customers. (This isn't a dig on their service, which I think is great - we're paying customers at work, and RHN is a tremendous tool.)
Re:Not a fair comparison (Score:5, Informative)
I just can't update all of my linux servers and desktops every year. There's too much going on, like going to 8.0 means moving apache from 1.3 to 2.0 for example (or downgrading once installed). It takes time to test everything before doing big migrations.
Some people here might be able to fine tune their personal linux boxes with ease and see this as no big deal, but get into a corporate IT world where everything must be tested to death before even hotfixes or errata are applied, and then talk about dozens or hundreds of servers, and you'll understand that upgrading that quick isn't just possible.
You think it won't matter? I'm an IT manager with deadlines, stress, labor resource issues, budget shortages, etc, and it concerns me greatly. Won't take much for Microsoft to make a pitch for a stable and predictable environment to people like me to sway us... If you don't think so, you don't understand corporate mentality...
Re:Not a fair comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
It was the availability of a cheap base price and an affordable RHN subscription that got me the green light to replace our NT servers with Red Hat servers. I expended a lot of political capital making arguments about savings in maintenance and deploring the Microsoft upgrade treadmill. Management was suspicious but in the end trusted my judgement as the "expert" opinion.
I'm going to look like a fucking asshole if red hat puts us on the same high cost / upgrade treadmill program that I convinced everyone we were getting out of.
Note to red hat: continue to provide an affordable RHN subscription and don't force us to upgrade our servers every 12 months. If you do, during one of those upgrade cycles, you will find yourselves alongside MS in the dustbin, and we'll move to another distro. Or, worst case scenario, management will no longer see the monetary benefit and decide to return to the comforting familiarity of Microsoft's eager clutches, and I'll be "that dick with no sense of judgement" for the rest of my career.
Re:Not a fair comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm in the same boat. Sure, I can divert more of my tech staff to spend the extra time on a constant upgrade cycle, or manually patching older revs, but then that plays right into the hands of Microsoft's argument that Linux is more expensive in the long run because it's more of an effort to run it.
I thought I hit bliss city when I saw RHN. Management of all of my linux boxes, desktops and servers, with a few clicks on a web page. I eagerly got the funding to pay for it. Now, if it's only good for a year or I have to pay high dollars for AS, I start looking like the fool for switching.
Well had they posted MY story instead.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I have to turn around and tell them that Redhat changed it's game plan and convert each one of these clients over, or let them continue to pay me to constantly upgrade their network just to keep them within their errata entitlements. I for one....basically said to hell with redhat about 5 hours ago (incidently right after I submitted my story that
Face it people, the people like "us" have made redhat and they just turned their back on us for the corperate world.
Don't get me wrong, I have NO problem with end of life, but 1 year for what's there now. The woman I spoke with at Redhat (yes I did research it directly with the company not just reading what nimrods say) she said that after this first round, there's going to be another change. Anyone using personal or the "free" version (and probably the professional) will ONLY be eligable for errata during the time that the release they are using is current. As soon as they release another version, errata for the older is gone. In other words, since redhat releases usually twice a year....that would me 2 upgrades a year just to keep yourself up2date. Screw that.
and you can pay anyone willing to fix it? (Score:2)
If you have the money. Unfortunately many small to medium businesses don't have the money, or shouldn't have the money allocated towards this sort of expense. In many cases it's just cheaper to stay with a reasonable recent version of whatever software you are using.
RedHat's whole business is support (Score:5, Insightful)
But isn't that what you're paying RedHat for when you buy support from RedHat? By cutting their support, they're cutting the one service that paying customers actually want (unless they buy the software as a donation). MS just patched NT4, which has been out since '95 or so, and you're criticizing MS and excusing RedHat. Give me a break.
what's left? Advanced Server? (Score:2)
I stay (at home) with Gentoo [gentoo.org] - it doesn't seem to go a proprietary way anytime soon. Redhat might be a good option for enterprise servers, but not for home or SOHO users.
Will there be someone else making RPM with fixes? (Score:2)
Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, as the product responsible for Linux I can sure see myself explaining this to my boss (who is very pro-free software): Er, yeah mate. We just hire a bunch of hippies if Red Hat support runs out on the server products we run. I'm sure Oracle will be more then happy to support our home modified kernel sources. Sure a great career move on my side.
Sorry, this is just plain dumb and makes me wonder if Red Hat indeed is a good choice for this company. We are talking of a major divison of one of the biggest logistics companies worldwide.
A one year time frame is just plain unacceptable in a corporate environment.
I think it very much depends how Red Hat handles this on their enterprise level support contracts.
(I read the part about the three year life cycle for their "advanced server" products. Which ,imo are just a scam in the first place).
redhat lifecycle - tie to RHCE validity? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm surprised that people are still running RH6.0. It's far less secure than 7.x or 8.0. The desktop (and server environment) are much better as well. Sure there are some libc5 legacy apps but there's really no excuse for a server to be running it. Upgrade or do a fresh install and use the newer features (like journalling, LVM, iptables, 2.4 series kernels etc) because they make an immense difference. RH7.2 really should be a minimum if you are serious.
What are you paying for (Score:2, Insightful)
Since the code is otherwise free, service is the *only* thing you're paying for - it should be top notch.
check out the 2.1 AW license...it's kinda stiff :) (Score:3, Interesting)
especially the report and auditing section.
I support a lot of redhat machines.I appreciate that they ahve to make money and all, but really. I don't call them and ask for support. i don't use the RHN. i run a mirror.
I did call once and ask for support...I got tossed back to HP!
LWN had some discussion on this (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, MS ain't that bad (for EOL at least) (Score:2)
I really think it's a bit hypoctritical to infer that RedHat is in the wrong by wanting to rid itself of the shackles of 6.x support. Find a bug in any piece of GPL software, and the first thing you'll hear is "We don't want to know unless you compile from the nightly CVS".
If most GPL software (software from GNU itself thankfully excluded) is only supported for 24 hours then I think that both RedHat and Microsoft do a good job in comparison.
quietly? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Quietly??" Hardly. I've received notice of this at least three times in the past couple of months from various RH newsletters. I even considered writing to let them know I had gotten the message. It's been on their errata web page for over a month (at least since 8.0 has been out).
I guess this shows you CAN'T count on people to get the message unless you beat it into them, or perhaps this whole article is a RH troll to actually get the message out??
I now expect to receive several other explanatory e-mails from RH after this slashdot article.
RHCE irony... (Score:5, Interesting)
But the RHCE program is geared towards this same "consumer" release. Current RHCE is for Redhat 8.x version and you have to get recertified every other (consumer) major release number. So, what good is RHCE? You get certified to run your home Linux box then?
Bad for produciton sites (Score:5, Insightful)
I know some sites are still running Solaris 5.2 (which was de-emphasised about 5 years ago). It takes some companies almost a year to get their software really stable. Forcing them to replace their OS on a yearly basis is going to discourage movement to redhat
From a marketing (as well as technical) point of view, theis seem s like a really bad idea(tm).
This is pretty much obvious to me. (Score:3, Informative)
The incredibly fast development of linux right now is making older versions obsolete very fast. If you want to run something really old you should use debians stable version since it is rock solid and dont tread on the edge like most other distros right now.
Good to be out in the open... (Score:3, Informative)
That said, Linux has an extreme level of upgradability. Using Red Hat specifically, I ran version 5.1 and upgraded it using newer and newer packages and custom kernels. The result, before I decided to restart from scratch, was mostly based on RH 7.
Even a kernel update -- custom or packaged -- usually does not require user level software changes. When it does, the updates are usually backward compatable so you have a fall back option. This means that if someone runs RH 6, and a local exploit or bug is found in the kernel or other software, they can update to a version that will not have the hole.
Is upgading single packages painless? Not necessarily, though the painful parts are usually because of package dependencies with non-critical programs. Having a mix of packages from different 'versions' is entirely possible as long as you handle the upgrades in a conservative manner; update only what is necessary not every package on the system.
Hello....McFly!?!?! (Score:4, Interesting)
I was really suprised by this since a long lifespan is the one thing that RedHat had over Mandrake (Mandrake's product lifespan is 2 years from date of initial release..) I don't know about the rest of you, but I have servers running right now with 2 years of uptime..some are in the same city as me, some are colocated in other cities. I can't upgrade these systems without either flying to the colocation site or having them mailed to me.
I came to precisely the same conclusion as the folks in this article. If you're using Linux on a server, it's stupid to use anything other than Debian. The commercial distros NEED you to upgrade, whether or not there are any compelling new features in their new versions. The Debian developers could care less about you buying a new set of CDs every six months.
It's pretty funny that RedHat seems to be following right in Mandrake's footsteps here. It will be a great boon for virus writers if they really do drop support for all those 7.2 installs out there...but I can't imagine that serious sysadmins will put up with this for very long.
This is terrible for Linux in real businesses. (Score:5, Insightful)
I work for a real company. I can't use an unsupported operating system. I can't upgrade every machine every year. I can't even upgrade to the latest and greatest (e.g. RedHat 8 and Solaris 9 are out of the question), because it is too untested. These are the business realities, not factors that I or any other individual have control over. A single incident (e.g. a server crashes and whatever sort of failover is in place does not work) can cost more money than my yearly salary. A single hiccup (e.g. a 1 second network outage for a single machine) can cost more than my paycheck.
Sun at least makes guarantees that binaries that worked on previous versions of Solaris will work on new versions. (If they pass a test suite). RedHat makes no such guarantee.
I thought I was making real progress to replacing Solaris servers with Linux servers. But with this announcement, I don't know what to do. If I deploy RedHat, I am adding a substantial (and mostly hidden) cost and risk. RedHat seemed like the logical choice, but my next course of action is going to be to investigate alternate supported Linux distros (IBM, Sun).
Come on guys, this is silly. (Score:3, Interesting)
(1) Download the latest RH and buy RH support for it (because this is really just about support),
(2) Hire your own admin to stay abreast of these issues, or do it yourself. (But this is why people pay for RH service, so this isn't a likely option, or
(3) Contract out to another company to step in and do errata updates on EOL'd RH distributions. It's legal, but probably expensive, unless a bunch of people band together to do it.
Anyways, as the argument goes for contributing back to the linux codebase . . . It doesn't make any sense for a company to update programs without trying to get their updates put back into the codebase. Same thing is going on here. It doesn't make sense for RH to back-patch all of these older programs just for errata updates. Too much time and effort that could be spent on the real task: creating more advanced and better working programs. You don't see many people doing updates to Linux Kernel 2.0.39 these days, do you? Wonder why that might be. . .
Maybe I'm missing something (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't RedHat trying to woo big corporate/enterprise accounts? From what I know of the corp/enterprise attitude (admittedly not a lot), they don't wnat to have to upgrade the whole OS on a yearly basis in order to stay up to date.
I do realize that the packages themselves will very likely be upgraded and that any admin can go get them and apply the updates himself, but isn't up2date and its associated collection of updates in one easy to find place one of the biggest selling points?
How is RedHat not shooting itself in the foot on this one? Someone please explain it to me, I'd really like to know.
Go start a support company (Score:3, Interesting)
If it's true that companies want support for their installations so they don't have to upgrade, then I'm betting that it's worthwhile enough that someone could start a little company providing support to old RH installs.
Think about it; you don't have to do NEW development as you might if you were doing a full distro - RedHat is paying for that. The bugs are going to be identified and repaired by others - you just have to patch up the software and send it out. Wouldn't need to be that big of a company, either, I'll bet - half a dozen techies and a few biz types would probably do it.
Re:Eh? (Score:2)
2 points:
1. It is reasonable for companies to drop support, contrary to the BS that M$ got for the '95 EOL announcements around here. You may have confused the poster you responded to with one of the many
2. You can grab "Redhat's code" and maintain it yourself, or pay anyone you like to maintain it. Not so with M$.
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
That would make sense except for the fact that it invalidates the very reason for RH's existence, which is to provide precisely that sort of service. People who buy RH are the ones least likely to maintain the code.
Re:Eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
You missed the "or pay anyone you like to maintain it" part.
It turns out (I'm certain) that if you REALLY wanted M$ to support '95 for you, they would. You'd just have to fund the entire effort yourself, plus whatever profit they wanted.
Likewise for Redhat. However, there are a lot of other folks you could convince to support whatever old version you want in the case of Redhat. It's not really feasible to try to get someone else to support M$ software - not the way you'd like, anyway.
I actually worked for a company where this was done. We were paid VERY good money to support a free (as in speech) product. This back in '96 or so.
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Informative)
I've never bought support from Red Hat... I just d/l the discs off a mirror and go (and am building my own system in my spare time, though I need a working system in the meantime). Anything Red Hat releases you can get for free and, after all, Linux is still a vastly growing community. For RH to EOL their products in such a (comparatively) short time-frame is expected, given the rapid growth of the core Linux software.
If the distributions were dramatically different between versions on the inside, I could see why someone would be worried about a short RH EOL. But they're at the mercy of the defacto standard version (if you could call it that) of the thousands of core packages that make up the entire distribution. Everyone's trying to jump on the prelinking bandwagon offered with glibc 2.3.1 (which is a killer for a graceful upgrade), but the prelinking feature is about as far from backwards compatible as you can get.
Re:Price is the Issue (Score:3, Insightful)
I have one. Windows XP.
I don't have to pay $800/year for Windows XP for every desktop install of it. It seems my choice for Redhat on the desktop is either AS at $800/year for three years of support, or the "consumer" version for a one year support cycle.
Re:Price is the Issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:this headline was a really bad idea (Score:3, Interesting)
So which one it is, then? It's not for the desktop, ok, but hey, it's not for the server, either (with such short lifespan, companies aren't going to use RH Linux for servers... if their support is dropped so quickly, they might as well just run Slackware or Debian and be done with it).
The comparison to Sun is striking: they are clear about the fact that Solaris is only and exclusvely a server operating environment (sic), and they behave that way, in the sense that they support, directly or through their website, even ultra-old versions of Solaris (you will find support documentation even for Solaris 2.5, on the Sun's website!!!!!)