[ale] When to upgrade?

[Greg Freemyer]

SUSE provides security patches for 2 years on its "enthusiast" line. 
(8.1, 8.2, 9.0, 9.1)

5 years on the Enterprise line. (SLES 8, SLES 9)

SuSE is releasing its final set of 8.1 security fixes right now.  So
if anyone is still running it, they should consider upgrading soon.

9.0 is only a little over a year old, so you have another year before
they quit providing security patches.  SInce 9.0 is the last of the
2.4.x kernels from SUSE, I would not be surprised if they support it
even beyond the 2 year point.

FYI: SuSE has a security announcement mailing list that is extremely
low volume.  It is worth subscribing to if you want to know when
distros are going out of support.

Greg
-- 
Greg Freemyer

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 08:50:00 -0500, Geoffrey <esoteric at 3times25.net> wrote:
> Nick Travis wrote:
> > I was debating whether or not I should upgrade the version of my disto
> > on a couple of systems.  One of these is a production system and one
> > is not, but it is pretty important.  Both are on the Internet so
> > security is a concern.  Is there a general rule as to when the OS
> > needs to be updated?  For example, if I'm running SUSE 9.0 are there
> > any risks associated with not upgrading to 9.2?  What if its 9.1?
> 
> Generally, as long as the version is still supported, an upgrade is not
> warranted from a security perspective.  I'm pretty sure Suse is still
> providing support/updates for all 9.* so you should be okay.
> 
> Upgrades are necessary to get newer functionality.  Upgrades for
> security purposes are not necessary until the version you're running is
> no longer supported.
> 
> --
> Until later, Geoffrey
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