Kernel (security updates)

[William Burns]

Ugo:

I just switched 3 mail servers over to SuSE from RedHat 7.2
We're hoping that SuSE9 will be supported for the next 3 years.

Ugo Bellavance wrote:

> Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote:
>
>> What linux distro do you use?
>
> Fedora
>
>> Do they provide security updates to those
>> stock kernels?
>
> Yes


I thought that security updates for fedora were not a guarantee from RedHat.
If there are going to be community contributed fedora packages, RedHat
can't be committed to updating them ALL, can they?

Is there a stated policy on what fedora components RedHat will maintain,
and for how long?
AFAIK, there are now no updates to RedHat8, or 9.
Any idea what happens to fedora core-1 support when fedora core-2 comes out?

The fedora community might do this (security update) job very well, but
my company prefers to have a commercial entity back that up w/ a promise.

Alternatively, there IS a not-often mentioned product from RedHat that
shares the same "bitset" w/ RHEL3.
Note: RHEL WS would be suitable for a mail server...
Aside from RHEL AS, ES, and WS, there is still a "retail" version of
RedHat called "Professional Workstation 3" (RHPW)
http://www.redhat.com/software/workstation/
http://www.redhat.com/mktg/rhpw/
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2003-November/msg07331.html
http://www.redhat.com/archives/taroon-list/2003-November/msg00072.html

I've heard that RHPW is available for as low as $50 in certain retail
outlets.
It comes w/ 1 year's access to RHN.
I have yet to get a straight answer as to whether or not security
updates will be available (ala ftp://updates.redhat.com) beyond that
first year without re-purchasing RHPW. At least it will be legal to
continue running it.beyond that first year regardless of the
practicality of doing so.
And... (free) source-code versions of all RedHat RPMS should always be
available for those willing to compile for themselves.

Anyway... I tried Whitebox Linux at home... I like it.
Anyone who's looking for a "really free" RHEL-substitute should at least
look there.
http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/

That being said, I think that the 2.6 kernel and the NSA's SE-Linux
extentions are going to make any 2.4 based distro look really old really
soon.

-Bill