[TriLUG] Troubled RH9

[Michael Brown]

While you can argue that changes of this sort may warrant a new version
number, you can bet that marketing is a major factor.  Redhat and Suse and
others all want to have the highest version number out there for the effect
it has on end-user perception.  Same reason as Oracle's initial database
release was 2.0 and Sybase jumped from 4.x (3?) to 10 (Oracle was at 7.1 and
they wanted to leapfrog).

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Michael Brown				Glen Raven, Inc./Info Services
Senior Oracle DBA			1831 N. Park Ave
Phone: (336)586-1146			Glen Raven, NC 27217
Fax: (336)586-1382			mbrown at glenraven.com


-----Original Message-----
From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org]On
Behalf Of Aaron Bockover
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2003 11:00 PM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Troubled RH9


On Sun, 2003-08-24 at 22:39, Jeremy Portzer wrote:
> Red Hat Linux 9 includes the New Posix Thread Library (NPTL), which
> makes it "binary incompatible" with previous releases.

Interesting... I haven't really followed RedHat development very
closely, and haven't used RedHat 9 much, other than the usual "curiosity
install." With NPTL in RH 9, Severn, and beyond, I take it that RPMs
packaged for RH9+ are incompatible with RH8 and older? What about RPMs
packaged for RH8 and installed under RH9? Is the old POSIX Thread
Library used for the execution of those binaries?

> If you go back through the history of Red Hat Linux, you'll see that
> major changes in binary compatibility have always resulted in a new
> major version number.

Well, I guess changes of the such would warrant a major version number
change. It's just funny to me, having really started to get into
GNU/Linux with RH 7.0 and slowly migrating to 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, and then
8... and then this past spring, a short 6 months after the release of 8,
RH 9 comes out... it was somewhat shocking, which isn't necessarily a
bad thing, in fact, it's probably a good thing. I mock the quick
succession of major version numbers out of humor, and humor alone ;-)

> I could be completely wrong about some of this, but this is what I've
> gathered from watching the -beta-list and -devel-list for a while.  I
> really wish the http://rhl.redhat.com/ web site would go back up to put
> these kinds of questions "in print" instead of always rumors.

I downloaded severn literally a few hours before the "informative" RHL
site ceased to exist. I started the download before bed, and the
following morning, the site was "down for construction," so I've been
eagerly waiting for the new site, and am wanting to learn more. I never
had time to read through the material, just start up BitTorrent.

Thanks for the info!
--Aaron


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