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back to article Red Hat now supports RHEL 5 and 6 for a decade

Companies that like Red Hat Enterprise Linux but hate changing Linux versions because of the hardware and software qualification process just got an excuse to be lazy for the next decade. Red Hat has announced that it will extend the production life of its latest RHEL 6 releases and the prior RHEL 5 releases by an extra three …

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  1. Bill Neal
    Linux

    The future?

    Looking far into the future and not liking what they see with the new gnome? I'm still using Fedora 14 and see no reason to change. My software runs just the way I want it to. Really, what advantage is there to upgrade my desktop os? and don't say because the new gui is easier to use.

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    1. Captain Scarlet
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Bigger version Number

      Bigger Numbers FTW

      Unless like me you are one of the first people to get Windows ME and showcase to all your friends how big a FAIL it really was. Yeah I think the "Don't fix what isnt broken" quote fits well here.

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    2. Nigel 11
      Reply Icon

      Fedora worst!

      If you care one jot about security you shouldn't choose sticking with any version of Fedora. They maintain it (as in security updates) for less than a year after the next version ships. Most of the other choices get maintained rather longer, but I don't think any are promising you the 9 years or so you're being promised with RHEL6.

      It also means you can avoid Gnome 3 until 2020, by which time it might even be usable.

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  2. admiraljkb
    Linux

    Ummm, I'm torn on this one

    On a personal level - RedHat isn't doing their customers or themselves a favour in the long run by doing that. RHEL5 (2.6.18) is already woefully obsolete now to run bare metal on a modern server, and RHEL6 (2.6.32) isn't far behind as Intel/AMD have been revving their proc/chipset architectures. With that said, virtualization has pretty much taken over, so running RHEL on bare metal hardware isn't as prevalent as a couple of years ago. I've always thought that the expense and risk of continually backporting fixes from newer component releases (like the kernel) was a bad idea going past 2-3 years though.

    HOWEVER, looking at it from a corporate view - Did they just say 10 years of "no upgrades", sign us up! Particularly since RHEL upgrades have been hit and miss in the past.

    Penguin, cuz its a Penguin article innit? :)

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  3. Hairy Airey
    Go

    This is very useful for organisations that have a scalable structure

    Rather than being stuck with three years of support and upgrades you can run hardware for a lot longer.

    There is no logical reason for throwing out good hardware every three or four years just to go after the next big thing. I bet most reg readers have electronic equipment that is over ten years old (I'm still running Red Hat Linux 9 on a Pentium 133...)

    It is far easier to get old hardware (even if you resort to buying it on eBay) and install on that what you know works than to go through the pain of testing a new kernel on new hardware.

    This is of course why Cobol is still very much alive. The pain of replacing it exceeds the savings that would result.

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