Re: Problems with Redhat 9

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On Wed, 2003-04-09 at 19:29, Greg Kurtzer wrote:

> Unmotivated, because:
<rant deleted>

Yeah..i've been meaning to ask around pppl about how they are going to
handle the Redhat EOL problem...since the cluster here is redhat based.
I can't see them jumping to debian. 1 year EOL sucks for a lot of middle
ground users like academics and research..no question about it...but
didn't debian give a whole 2 weeks notice before they dropped support of
the stable branch before the current stable? One year support cycles
suck...but it still beats debian's one stable release at a time model,
where when stable changes...it changes and support is dropped for the
old one with little notice.

I'm glad im not in a position of authority at the lab. For my personal
use needs...this EOL thing doesn't phase me...but I know its has to be
effecting pppl in the same way its affecting you, but just not to the
same magitude.
 =20

> IMHO, a community solution is the answer. Community software should be ma=
naged
> by the community! Unfortunately there are no distribution candidates that=
 fit=20
> this niche (niche being: community driven, main stream, RH lookalike (for
> vendor support and ease of maintenance), RPM based, etc...). Actually the=
re is
> enough local support from people that I have talked to that we are actual=
ly=20
> thinking of starting a community base OS based on RedHat (for now). Proba=
bly
> it would use Fedora for non-base OS packages... Nothing has been formally
> released, but we are already working on code! If this project interests y=
ou,=20
> please contact me (OS developers/hackers, documentists, testers, etc...).

Isn't this debian all over again..but with rpms. I would have thought
that a community effort to extend EOL for redhat releases would fill the
niche much better than an rpm based debian idea. If there is enough
interest in building up a distro from the ground up...is there enough
intrest in providing the community based security support past EOL for
rh7.3?  I think post EOL community support is something the community
could be very good at....if debian-like machinery is there to support
the community effort.  But the real question is...will such a community
driven distro be accepted in situations like the one you are in?

>When is Fedora supposed to get underway? I know they have a tree out now, =
but
> it is does not support < 8.

I don't know all the specifics im still trying to catch up on all the
discussions. My sense of the situation is that they are still figuring
out how to build up the machinery to bring community repositories up to
a workable state with some automation. But at this point I'm more of a
lurker than anything else, for a change of pace...a hopeful lurker. As
it stands, i think the idea of community based support built around Red
Hat releases as a base is probably worth exploring...and is important
enough for me to keep my mouth shut in the fedora lists until I actually
know a little more on packaging. But you've built packages...and a
package manager even! I imagine your perspective would probably be more
important than my own in any current discussion about how fedora will
look and more importantly how it will taste as a replacement for the
bitter chalky taste of the 1 year support cycle Red Hat has now.  This
EOL thing is a real challenge, and I imagine a lot of consultants will
be getting some nice juicy support contracts to fill the gap created by
the EOL policy. The open question is, can the community step up and
provide an organized solution to fill in that gap, on a volunteer basis?
A solution focused on a security first approach instead of a feature
creep approach? I'm hopeful fedora might come together and be one such
solution by the time the EOL date for 7.3. I don't know of another
project idea that has the potential of filling the support gap via
community effort. Sure I imagine individuals will provide their own post
EOL package collections...but fedora is the only idea I've seen that is
looking to pool development effort for Red Hat based package
collections.=20

-jef

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