On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 09:43:07AM -0500, Brian Wheeler wrote: > On Mon, 2010-02-08 at 22:47 -0600, Chris Adams wrote: > > Once upon a time, Michael Torrie <[email protected]> said: > > > There's always Fedora then---RH EL is not for everone. Or are you > > > saying RH should release a new version every year or so but support each > > > and every old version for 6 years? > > > > No, I don't expect a release every 12 months. The problem is that the > > release cycle is getting longer with each release: > > > > RHEL 3 -> RHEL 4: 16 months > > RHEL 4 -> RHEL 5: 25 months > > RHEL 5 -> RHEL 6: ? - 35 months and counting (at least 3-6 months yet?) > > > > The timing "delay" of RHEL6 is causing problems for my department. My > servers usually have a 3 year replacement cycle and I replaced them > early in the RHEL5 cycle. Since they're coming due I've got to decide on > whether to deploy RHEL5 again or try to get extended maintenance on the > hardware. > > Since we've got to revalidate all of our in-house software before we can > do the move it is not like we can just throw a switch when RHEL6 comes > out ... I actually have to plan for it. I contacted Redhat's sales via > the website to try to get an estimate of when RHEL 6 will be available > but I didn't even get a "if we told you we'd have to kill you". > > RHEL is a great product and I understand the need to get the > virtualization product out out the door, but not having any information > about the upcoming releases RHEL (even if it is vague) is driving me > nuts. > >
RHEL used to be on an 18 month release cycle. True, release dates were never public, but the 18 month cycle was well known and referenced by many folks in the community and from within Red Hat. Sometimes delays happen and that's perfectly acceptable. However, this cycle allowed us to well plan our internal support cycles. We were able to have a better idea where we needed to be in X months. That was definitely one of the features we wanted to pay for. The RHEL point releases or Updates used to be quarterly. This was too fast and I agree with Red Hat backing off on that point. However, I would appreciate a more firm twice a year or every 9 months cycle here. These updates cause me a lot of work...good work...but still work. Being able to plan this better is a definite feature request, and the betas do give me a fairly decent warning. What has the loss of the 18 month cycle done to other commercial products that we depend upon? Most of them in my shop still only support RHEL 4. What is to encourage them to build their products on newer platforms if RHEL 4 is still the last "stable" version? (Not that I agree with that reasoning, but a lot of folks still think of 5 as the new, bleeding edge OS that they need to wait for to stabilize.) The 18 month release cycle combined with the 7 years of support are big wins for us and why we wanted to jump on the RHEL bandwagon. Today, folks are asking me why we are still paying for and using this stuff. Jack Neely -- Jack Neely <[email protected]> Linux Czar, OIT Campus Linux Services Office of Information Technology, NC State University GPG Fingerprint: 1917 5AC1 E828 9337 7AA4 EA6B 213B 765F 3B6A 5B89 _______________________________________________ rhelv5-list mailing list [email protected] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhelv5-list
