On Sun, 2003-11-16 at 13:53, Matthew Saltzman wrote: > On Sun, 16 Nov 2003, Ed Hill wrote: > > > On Sun, 2003-11-16 at 03:18, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > > > > if that's the case, how many students are going to be interested > > > in the more stable but certainly older technology of RHEL on their > > > desktop? to which release of RH does RHEL currently correspond? > > RHEL 3.0 is pretty close to RH9+. > > > > > Hi Rob, > > > > Probably quite a few grad students, post-docs, and professors will be > > interested. Theres a lot of researchers using Linux for data reduction > > who really don't care about bleeding-edge stuff. They just want a > > stable, secure, and up-2-date platform for their desktops, servers, and > > beowulf clusters. > > > > For instance, we have dozens of users matching that description in our > > department. > > Another reason to stick with the slower-moving product is support for > commercial software. I kind of doubt that we'll see products like Maple, > Matlab, Mathematica, SPlus, CPLEX, etc. staying fully current with a > fast-moving Fedora product. They'll be supporting the OS that they can > get support for themselves, namely RHEL. And they will be very happy with > the longer life cycle. > TO continue this point, I have to believe there will be lots of software out there willing to consider porting/suporting a linux version of their software now that they can see a platform that does not change every time a new kernel comes out. They will now be able to say we support RHEL WS version 3 and know that they don't have to go through a significant testing cycle every 3 months. Bret
