Re: [Evolution] DST

[Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com>]

On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 08:15 -0500, Peter Van Lone wrote:
> OK, so the situations are analagous.
>
> I guess then, from my perspective (being a reseller/integrator trying
> to develop linux desktop offerings for customers) I would certainly
> vote to enable upgrade of "the major desktop applications" within
> versions. SUSE supports SLED for 5 years.
>
> That is a whale of a long time to expect staying at the same version
> for all of these apps. In fact, it almost seems ridiculous to even
> contemplate it.
>
> I can understand that only a few apps could be consistently upgraded
> over the life of the distro ... otherwise there would never be a new
> distro version, just updating the existing one. But at the same time,
> if customers have elected the stabilitiy of a distro supported for 5
> years, that does not mean that they would willingly choose a
> commitment to outdated desktop applications.

Newer versions of RHEL and (I believe) SLED are released long before the
support period for the previous version expires.  The period between
RHEL releases is about two years, even though we support a particular
release (to varying degrees) for seven.  This give enterprises the
option to upgrade when *they're* ready.  We still provide bug fixes for
RHEL 4 and security updates (and, it turns out, DST updates) for RHEL 3.

I assume SUSE uses a similar model for SLED.

Matthew Barnes