Re: OT: RH end-of-life

--On 28/01/03 08:15:08 -0500 John Berninger wrote:

> The Windows workstations here at NCSU have a viable lifetime of about
> one and a half semesters anyway, so a lifetime of a year from Red Hat is
> better, IMHO.  I also agree that regular re-installs of the student
> machines is the way to go, simply because the little darlings love to
> play around with any settings they can get their grubby little mitts on;
> we end up reinstalling about half our lab and classroom Windows
> platforms at some point during the semester because of this, so
> once-a-semester planner reinstalls wouldn't seem to be too onerous.
>

Hm. Our classroom service was upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 2000
last (calender) year in time for the start of this academic year. We still 
have
Windows 95 classroom machines and a lot of Windows 95 desktops.

While any classroom would be rebuilt frequently (our '95 boxes are
rebuilt daily) that's not the same as an upgrade.

To take just one example - moving from 7.x to 8.0, RH changed the way
the configuration for desktop menus was done. The new system is better
sure, but I don't want to have to tell the apps people that they've got to
drop everything and redo the menus.

If I could guarentee that I only had to do a major upgrade (major version 
number)
once a  year over the vac, that would be fine. Since RH cycles don't tie in
with the academic year I can't guarentee that.

Of course, I could (should?) pay for the (not-yet-released) Advanced
Desktop. But it would have to be very cheap per-seat for me to be able
to sell it - since a) we'd have to pay out for that before any Windows
licensing savings came in, and b) there's got to be a clear cost advantage
upfront to justify replacing a working system with something else.

Arthur



-- 
Arthur Clune, Systems Security Advisor, The Computing Service
University of York, UK, YO10 5DD.  +44 (0) 1904 433129