philosophical question

[Ed Wilts]

On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 08:34:20PM -0500, Tom Westheimer wrote:
> I was beginning to think the same thing. I am running a small website 
> and email server and want to run a PHP app for service orders.  I have 
> 10 email users so the question what distro do you think would be the 
> best with the least hassle? Version 7.3 , version 9 or FC1?

RHL 7.3 is not supported now so there will be no more security updates.
RHL 9 is due to be unsupported in about 6 weeks.

Depending on your support requirements, I would guess that Red Hat
Professional Workstation might be for you.  For about $85 you get RHEL
WS with a multi-year lifecycle and a full year of RHN updates.  If
you're still running 7.x, you're obviously expecting to run your version
for multiple years and expect to get updates.  With RHPW, you will get
that.  RHPW includes apache, php, imap, and both postfix and sendmail.
RHPW is what I run for the non-profit websites running on my home
system.

Philosophically speaking, my current thinking is that if the current
version of my supported distro doesn't include the version I want, then
I probably don't need it.  Want - yes; need - no.  I realize that there
are exceptions, but in general, with the stuff that's in RHPW today, you
can probably make it work in a supported, stable manner.

My background is from a midrange stable operating system (VMS) where OS
upgrades are done on a roughly 12-18 month release cycle - not
dissimilar to what Red Hat is doing.  This works for me - we've been
getting a lot of work done with VMS, and although I don't always the
latest version of everything, what I got works, and that's the bottom
line.  I don't spend many hours trying to see what I can do to get the
latest and greatest version because it's a nifty gee-whiz feature that I
could probably live without if I had to.

> >>My philosophical  question is how does one tackle getting everyting up 
> >>to date when installing new modules??   So I guess I am looking for some 
> >>general guidelines that should be used. 

-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program