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Chrome Google Red Hat Software Linux

RHEL 6 No Longer Supported By Google Chrome 231

Posted by samzenpus from the too-old dept.
sfcrazy writes "Google has declared Red Hat's RHEL 6 obsolete, showing a notification which says, 'Google Chrome us no longer updating because your operating system is obsolete.' Red Hat evangelist Jan Wilderboer says: 'We release new stable versions of RHEL every 2-3 years. The API/ABI stability is what sets it apart from community distros. Customers need long term stability. Google knows (and uses) that itself internally. By cutting the support of enterprise distributions they simply tell me to move elsewhere. That's not a very encouraging thing.'"
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RHEL 6 No Longer Supported By Google Chrome More

RHEL 6 No Longer Supported By Google Chrome

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  • RHEL 7 isn't even out yet! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ZorinLynx ( 31751 ) on Monday February 11, 2013 @10:33AM (#42859179) Homepage

    What the heck are they thinking?

    Also, RHEL versions are supported for a very long time. You can have systems running one version of RHEL, with security and bugfix updates for many years at a time. The whole point of the distro is stability; you don't have to worry about upgrading every six months.

    What is Google thinking?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      After re-iterating the summary, is there a point you are making?

    • Re:RHEL 7 isn't even out yet! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sunderland56 ( 621843 ) on Monday February 11, 2013 @11:09AM (#42859723)

      What the heck are they thinking?

      Maybe they meant to drop support for Red Hat Linux 6, not Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6?

        - Red Hat Linux 6.0 (Hedwig), April 26, 1999 (Linux 2.2.5-15)
        - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (Santiago), November 10, 2010 (Linux 2.6.32-71)

      Yes, their naming scheme could use some work.....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by harrkev ( 623093 )

        I am running RHEL6 x64 right now on my work machine. Since the only version of Flash that works on my system is hopelessly outdated, Chrome is the only way that I can actually catch the occasional Youtube video...

        • You're doing something wrong.

          I have this on my Centos 6 desktops (including the computer that I'm typing on right now): flash-plugin-11.2.202.262-release.x86_64

          It was downloaded from the adobe repository via yum, and it works fine with youtube videos. And other stuff.

    • What the heck are they thinking?

      Also, RHEL versions are supported for a very long time. You can have systems running one version of RHEL, with security and bugfix updates for many years at a time. The whole point of the distro is stability; you don't have to worry about upgrading every six months.

      What is Google thinking?

      Well, I can kind of understand Google on this one actually. I use CentOS (free as in beer RHEL clone) on most of my desktops. I use it because it's a very stable environment. An always-updating web browser is not exactly suitable if you want stability. Since Chrome is not open source there's not much we can do about it. I guess Red Hat could maintain a fork of Chromium if they wanted; they basically do that with Firefox right now. I haven't checked but I'm pretty sure Firefox ESR 17 runs on RHEL 6 (and prob

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ge ( 12698 )

      Did anybody actually even see this, apart from mr. Wildeboer? I'm running an up-to-date 64-bit CentOS 6 and an up-to-date Chrome beta on CentOS 6, and I have not seen this.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • By cutting the support of enterprise distributions they simply tell me to move elsewhere

    So Google wants us to go back to Firefox?
    SCNR ;-)

    • Re:Go where? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by h4rr4r ( 612664 ) on Monday February 11, 2013 @10:45AM (#42859319)

      Why would you be running RHEL on something that you use to browse the web?

      Either it is a server and does not have X installed or it is a desktop and RHEL would be a PITA since it has so little software in the repos.

      • Re:Go where? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11, 2013 @11:00AM (#42859549)

        RHEL is used for hardened unix workstations, too. RHEL5 is the only enterprise linux distro I know of worth using with FIPS 140-2 and DoD APL certification, meaning that it's the only option for military workstations other than Windows.

        So, take that arrogant "enterprise distro is only for servers" attitude elsewhere, please.

        • Re:Go where? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Tubal-Cain ( 1289912 ) on Monday February 11, 2013 @11:12AM (#42859773) Journal

          RHEL is used for hardened unix workstations, too. RHEL5 is the only enterprise linux distro I know of worth using with FIPS 140-2 and DoD APL certification, meaning that it's the only option for military workstations other than Windows.

          And you're allowed to install third-party software in that situation?

        • So, take that arrogant "enterprise distro is only for servers" attitude elsewhere, please.

          Speaking of "arrogant attitudes" ...

        • Also, the Xilinx FPGA design tools are only officially supported on RHEL. While I run Xilinx tools (and Impact JTAG programmer) with patched drivers, if I ever run into a problem they would look at the log file and refuse to help if they see that I am not running the supported RHEL.

      • Because it's a server, but I need to google the web for help or a man page occasionally.

        IT experts don't know all the answers, they just know where to find them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

          If you are doing that from a server you should be fired or at the very least a written reprimand should be issued.

          Use google from your workstation not the server.

      • RHEL works fine on my media centre with EPEL and nux-desktop. It gives me everything I want and more, and I don't have to worry about the OS falling out of support after a couple of years...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        Actually there is a ton of software available in repos for RHEL. Almost as much as Fedora, actually. The main recommended third-party repo is EPEL, and if you can't find something in there you can dip into a widely-trusted third-party repo called rpmforge. Between those two I've not found very much lacking except the latest bleeding edge stuff like Gnome 3.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 0123456 ( 636235 )

        Why would you be running RHEL on something that you use to browse the web?

        Web browsers are not just used to browse the web.

        Most of the ancillary hardware in our racks these days has a web management interface which is not accessible through the firewall; some still has ssh or telnet, but that's becoming increasingly rare. So to manage it, I can either log into one of the servers and run a web browser from there, or port forward it through SSH and run one locally.

      • You can run RHEL/CentOS with current Chome, Chromium, Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, the usual multimedia apps, etc., etc., These programs are not in the official RHEL/CentOS repositories but they are available in reliable independent repos. I know because I've done it.

  • Thats funny because... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I think RHEL 6 will be supported until 2020.

    WTF.

    • I think RHEL 6 will be supported until 2020.

      WTF.

      True, but Chrome is not supported by Red Hat. It's not in their repositories. You have to install it manually if you want it, and Google has no responsibility to support it everywhere.

      • I think RHEL 6 will be supported until 2020.

        WTF.

        True, but Chrome is not supported by Red Hat. It's not in their repositories. You have to install it manually if you want it, and Google has no responsibility to support it everywhere.

        Google's loss, then.

  • There's an obvious reason why Google's doing this. They target the most popular desktop distros and can't be maintaining releases for old distros without a lot of desktop users. Now, if there were a 'standard' Linux API (lumping all the various API's together as something Google could target and all distros could support), this wouldn't be an issue. The same Chrome release for Windows can be used on XP->Win8 (desktop mode). That's why 3rd party dev's target WIN32. That's also why 3rd parties won't (

    • Re:Okay, I'll say it... fragmentation (Score:5, Informative)

      by betterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) on Monday February 11, 2013 @11:13AM (#42859787)

      Red Hat - or anybody else, for that matter - is free to take the pure open source Chromium and port it to RHEL

      There is a reason Chromium has not made it into Fedora's repositories (and by extension, RHEL):

      https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Chromium [fedoraproject.org]

      Basically, the problem is this: Chromium depends on extensions to libraries that have not been merged with the main releases of those libraries, and so having Chromium on Fedora would require either static linking (giant packages) or maintain separate sets of libraries just for Chromium. Neither of those options is something that Fedora will do, and if Fedora is unwilling to include a package in its repositories the package as almost no chance of being included in RHEL. Years have passed since the problem was first discussed with Google (see the link), and there has not really been much progress, mostly for the same reasons that RHEL6 is not supported by Chrome: Google does things their way and is not going to change that for someone else (regardless of that other person's reasoning).

      • Neither of those options is something that Fedora will do

        Google does things their way and is not going to change that for someone else

        Looks like Google's not the only one.

  • Well, at least I'm using ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Monday February 11, 2013 @11:11AM (#42859759) Homepage

    ... CentOS 6.3. Google will support CentOS, right?

  • They're just pushing costs onto their customers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guanxi ( 216397 ) on Monday February 11, 2013 @11:11AM (#42859761)

    Vendors don't want to the cost of supporting your platform, so they drop you. To avoid any responsibility, they simply add an error message blaming the user: "Your platform is obsolete." (I guess it's my problem now!) Many users are uniformed or credulous enough to believe it.

    Many 'cloud' vendors are going this way; they've simply ignored their commitment to support their users and make the users do the work of supporting vendors (via upgrades and installations). I suspect it's because many users are consumers, aren't aware the vendors have this obligation, and take the 'error' messages at face value.

    Worse, I see it in business situations. For example, cloud vendors we pay say that the current Firefox ESR is obsolete, or that we need to deploy browser upgrades office-wide every 5 weeks -- it does nothing for our bottom line, we'd just be doing it to please them.

    There needs to be some push-back. We have no reason to absorb these costs.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jimicus ( 737525 )

      There needs to be some push-back. We have no reason to absorb these costs.

      Those costs need to be absorbed somewhere. Most cloud products operate with a business model of "flog it cheap, keep costs down to a minimum and make the money up on volume"; they work because so many businesses don't see beyond the "cheap" bit.

      You want your provider to accommodate every little browser quirk that Firefox has had in the last 3 years? Fine, but don't expect any support from a business that has taken the conscious decision to avoid dealing with this.

  • RHEL is for servers not desktops (Score:3)

    by KidSock ( 150684 ) on Monday February 11, 2013 @11:17AM (#42859867)

    I don't think I've ever installed RHEL or CentOS with X Windows. Frankly it annoys me that there are no desktop distros that are maintained for longer than a year or two. Are we really expected to reinstall Linux on a workstation ever year? That scares me because it makes me think the people who are using Linux are just screwing around and not doing real work. Anyone doing real work doesn't have time to reinstall Linux every year.

    • Ubuntu LTE.

    • Re:RHEL is for servers not desktops (Score:4, Informative)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 ) on Monday February 11, 2013 @11:32AM (#42860143)

      Red Hat has a desktop version of RHEL, with the same support cycle.

    • Re:RHEL is for servers not desktops (Score:5, Informative)

      by betterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) on Monday February 11, 2013 @11:37AM (#42860215)

      Frankly it annoys me that there are no desktop distros that are maintained for longer than a year or two

      Allow me to rid you of your annoyance:

      https://www.redhat.com/products/enterprise-linux/desktop/ [redhat.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KidSock ( 150684 )

        Last I checked a RedHat subscription was not priced for the non-corporate user.

        And I have tried those "long term support" distros more than once (although not RH) and my experience was that a) nobody actually uses them so the support isn't that great (you can't find a lot of answers in forums, blogs and such) and bugs take a long time to get fixed and more likely b) they only support new hardware for a little while so they don't really work unless you buy a laptop at the same time the distro was released. A

        • If you are looking to spend money RedHat is probably best you can get, if you can get a subscription with support. The reason you cannot find good answers in forums and such for RedHat, CentOS, and the like is because the paid knowledge base for RedHat is fantastic. In addition to having answers to almost any problem, there are no "wrong" or overly inefficient answers mixed in there to confuse you. Also, in the event your problem is too weird for the knowledge base, you can make a ticket in exactly a sim

          • I hate to reply to my own post but I hit submit instead of continue editing.

            Anyway you can get a RedHat self-support Desktop subscription for $50 (access to Knowledge Base) or a full service Workstation one for $300 (can make tickets). Not exactly cheap like windows but not requiring a corporate level of income either.

    • And why exactly is it not for desktops. I run it my desktops, even my laptops. Runs just fine.

    • Any Ubuntu Release marked LTS is supported for 3 years.. they come out every 18 months with new ones, but the old will be supported for 3 years..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mcrbids ( 148650 )

      I've been using Fedora for years. It is annoying to have to update every 18 months, especially when it causes severe breakage. (Kmail2 was an unmitigated disaster)

      Typically, though, updates cost me a morning.

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