I'm not at all anti-Linux, but this sort of thing is one of the chief reasons I still recommend Solaris (as recently as two weeks ago) in places where the environment *has* to stay stable and well-supported for years to come. The following is a quote from a recent interview with Sun's Solaris Product Manager Larry Wake on this subject:
What is the update schedule for Solaris releases?
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Larry Wake: We actually initiated this in Solaris 7, and the releases are intended to be approximately quarterly. We don't say 'quarterly,' because sometimes it's five months, and on very rare occasions it's two months. There is a cool Web site you might want to check out: http://sun.com/solaris/FCC/releases.html. It has links to our release model. We actually publish it in advance. I can tell you that Solaris 10 is scheduled to end-of-life in 2013. I challenge any other operating system vendor to tell you something that is going to happen with its OS 11 years from now -- other than have another service pack. (laughs)
Three notes:
1. The quote above is from http://searchsolaris.techtarget.com/qna/0,289202,sid12_gci861888,00.html
2. The site at Sun referred to in the quote has moved, I'm not sure to where (bummer). In general, though, it's Sun's policy to support each version (2.6, 7, 8, 9, etc.) for a minimum of eight years. By that time, you really should have been able to find a way to move even the cruftiest old app to a newer OS environment. I used to work for Sun, and I can honestly say I've *never* seen another company half as dedicated to ongoing support and backward compatibility, especially binary compatibility (which HP's HP/UX and IBM's AIX have pretty much given up on): Binaries from the first 32-bit SPARCstation 1 still run unmodified (but considerably faster) on the latest 64-bit Sun boxes. There are good reasons people still decide to shell out the bucks for Suns, and this is a big one. Linux isn't really enterprise ready until it can support enterprise lifecycle timeframes, too...
3. The fact that Red Hat declares End of Life or End of Service Life for a distro is really meaningless - if there's a market demand, others will pick it up. (Possibly even Mitel - although that's unlikely given the amount of maturing Linux has yet to do and the rate at which it's happening. Of course, even that would only hold if you're a paying Mitel customer rather than one of the rest of us that uses the free version of the product. Security alone will probably be incentive enough to upgrade for everyone except those using server-only configs on internal networks.) It's really a shame none of the Debian based commercial distros have gained significant traction - Debian stable is the closest thing to this in the Linux world, almost as solid as the BSDs and nearly as easy to upgrade piece-by-piece.
Dub
Russell Teague wrote:
I searched the archives and didn't find a thread on this one. What's the community consensus on Red(mond) Hat's new EOL policy?http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-12-19-018-26-NW-RH-SW ---snip--- We have also taken this opportunity to clarify the end of life dates for errata support for our current products: Red Hat Linux 8.0 (Psyche) December 31, 2003 Red Hat Linux 7.3 (Valhalla) December 31, 2003 Red Hat Linux 7.2 (Enigma) December 31, 2003 Red Hat Linux 7.1 (Seawolf) December 31, 2003 Red Hat Linux 7.0 (Guinness) March 31, 2003 Red Hat Linux 6.2 (Zoot) March 31, 2003 ---snip--- Kinda quick if you ask me. And it makes it brutish on the developers to keep up. Russell Teague [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://mtnbike.org If you don't see the battle, you are not in the fight. -- Please report bugs to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] (only) to discuss security issues Support for registered customers and partners to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Searchable archive at http://www.mail-archive.com/devinfo%40lists.e-smith.org
