Just got an email from "RedHat Network" - it says that they are closing down support for 7.1 7.2 7.3 and 8 - and only continuing support for RedHat 9 from April 2004 ?!

As I read it, they also say that they won't be producing any free Operating Systems anymore - but they are forcing you to pay a lot of money for an "enterprise edition" ?!?!?!?!

What the hell?


Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata support for Red Hat Linux 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 as of December
31, 2003. Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata support for
Red Hat Linux 9 as of April 30, 2004. Red Hat does not plan to release
another product in the Red Hat Linux line.

You are rather late to know this. This has been known for quite a long time, and has been discussed many times here. Search around in this forum.

you can stick to Fedora (free RH) or switch to some other distro (or even better FreeBSD)

Originally posted by FHDave
You are rather late to know this. This has been known for quite a long time, and has been discussed many times here. Search around in this forum.

Ok sorry :D I'm just slow :P

News to me as well. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Get people hooked on the candy then start mak'in em pay.

Capitalist society alive and well.
Hello FreeBSD... goodby Redhat.

May I also recommend http://www.gentoo.org .. highly standardised with some nice projects on the go, very secure aswell.

Originally posted by Winkie
May I also recommend http://www.gentoo.org .. highly standardised with some nice projects on the go, very secure aswell.

I would personally wait a little more before putting Gentoo in production.

Also taking hours to build from source may not be the best way to go :)

I just hope fedora takes over up2date maintainance for RH older products. At the very least, I think they would release patches in rpm. But it's still a hassle.

RH has also just make the system entitlements non-reversible without notice. Now I am stuck with it on some systems I don't really want on. It can be fixed... but still I wish they inform us. They are just getting on my nerves.

tbh although its a pain in the arse for the majority of people, i think it makes good business sense on their part..

it'll save them money in the long run. and allow them to focus on the people that actually make them as a business money - enterprise customers who actually buy their services

do you mean enterprise edition? no more the cheap home edition also?

?

Hopefully Fedora will be a worthy replacement to Redhat. Otherwise, I think the way to go will be Mandrake for the desktop and the BSDs for servers.

from what i hear a machine with the 2.6 kernel will outstrip a similar spec'd bsd one..

Just wondering what are most of you guys running Cpanel going to do about this? I think 2004 isn't really far away IMO.

Hooray, we need more developers back in FreeBSD mode where they belong!

I guess they finally realized that it is harder to turn a profit by offering free software. It is just survival instinct. Glad they are making the move now which should ensure its existences but probably shatter people's hope of continual free software.

Originally posted by eddy2099
I guess they finally realized that it is harder to turn a profit by offering free software. It is just survival instinct. Glad they are making the move now which should ensure its existences but probably shatter people's hope of continual free software. It might also shatter Redhat's image and cause it to ultimately fail. It's a bold decision. Their free products are responsiblie for making them a household name. If they are smart, Fedora will remain in their interests and will retain some of the Redhat branding within it.

All you ensim/cpanel hosts (and anyone else running the rock-solid RH 7.2/3) should be well underway in your migration to RH9 or fedora or debian or *bsd... and don't underestimate the time required. It's a big job.

This is bad news for a lot of people. I doubt that many of these Ensim/RH set ups will get updates which could lead to a lot of problems early next year.

Fortunately for us, this looks likely coincides with some major upgrades (which we've been planning anyway) so we'll just switch OS...

alex (who's mildly anoyed but very understanding :))

Our conclusion has been (the process is underway now) to convert our shared cluster to Debian, and dedicated servers to RH9 (eventually Fedrora). It's a huge task, requiring thousands of admin-hours.

RH9 doesn't last much longer -

Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata support for
Red Hat Linux 9 as of April 30, 2004.

Oh we know... it's a tremendous pain. Basically we're standardizing on our own custom distro (with PHP 4.3.4, MySQL 4.0.16, phpMyAdmin, Squirrelmail, etc) based on RH9, so hopefully a switch in the spring to Fedora won't be too painful.

Originally posted by John[H4Y]
It might also shatter Redhat's image and cause it to ultimately fail. It's a bold decision. Their free products are responsiblie for making them a household name. If they are smart, Fedora will remain in their interests and will retain some of the Redhat branding within it.

A household name is not all that important if it cannot pay the bills to put it there in the first place. Then all that household name is going to be is just some marking on some tombstone but probably soon to be forgotten.

Businesses such as Redhat needs money to run and supporting a free OS requires money too. I doubt Redhat is made up of full-time volunteers who are happy to work without pay or any form of compensation except the appreciation that it helps so-and-so web host make money while providing such a product and service for free to that web host.

But the bad thing is those of us who use their products for servers, and are willing to pay to continue support or have an upgrade path for an existing OS are S.O.L. If you run RH 6,7,8,9, you cannot upgrade the OS to anything else...period. So moving 1000's of account or phasing out RH is the only option left to many...

- John C.