Thanks, Bruce. Microsoft comes under regular fire for its apparent eagerness to end-of-life its products, making them more difficult and expensive to support, and hence forcing users to upgrade to the next version. But without fanfare Red Hat has quietly introduced its own approach to end-of-life, and compared to this, Microsoft's idea of an upgrade cycle looks pretty sedate. As of the release of Red Hat 8.0, the company is only guaranteeing errata maintenance for the 12 months following a product's release.
Linux release cycles are of course pretty fast, and Linux is either free or cheap, depending on whether or not you feel the need to add to your manual pile. However, if Linux is being used in a commercial environment then IT managers are not going to be particularly enthusiastic about even the possibility of having to upgrade to a new version every 12 months. Red Hat's current death list EOLs RH 7.1-8.0 at the end of this year, while 6.2 and 7.0 get theirs as of the end of March.
|