[ale] 64bit thunderbird 3.0.4

[Lightner, Jeff]

Actually RHEL is a little different.  Although the "base" package
remains the same throughout the life of major releases (RHEL5) what
RedHat does is backport bug and security fixes into that "base" so the
version you see on RHEL has a RHEL version suffix appended to the "base"
version number.

This causes Security auditors to gag - they can't seem to understand
that BIND 9.3.4-5.12.11 isn't actually the same thing as unpatched
9.3.4.

The downside isn't in bugs and security but rather in new features.
BIND 9.7 is much more mature than 9.3.4 so when RHEL gets long in the
tooth as RHEL5 is now one starts chomping at the bit to move on.   The
good news is RHEL6 is out in beta.   

Of course there isn't anything in stopping a user from compiling and
running base 9.7 themselves even on RHEL5.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Michael Trausch
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2010 11:54 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] 64bit thunderbird 3.0.4

On Mon, 2010-05-17 at 11:42 -0400, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> This way of operating is infecting IT like a disease.
> 
> Whether it's on account of client demands, vendor "certification" of
>  one of their products, PHB-ism, or what have you, the assembly of
>  tightly-locked dependency stacks was one of the reasons why I
>  *thought* we fled the closed-source proprietary software world.  I
>  don't consider myself "Stallman-complete" but whenever this sort of
>  situation appears, no good ever seems to come of it.  Even this
>  property of RHEL and RHEL-alikes where the packages are
>  version-ceilinged often seems to take what should be basic
> stewardship
>  and turns it into administration crises, i.e., CUPS has a bug, can't
>  upgrade it, must upgrade distro version first, but X app doesn't run
>  under the new version, etc., etc., etc.
> 
> But the RHEL situation is just one example of a larger issue:  trade 
> away one aspect of your computing freedom and other aspects follow.  
> Trading away freedom only works if your trading partner is
> benevolent. 

It's one of the reasons that I like running Ubuntu.  It's a little more
flexible than that, and they will fix bugs that are critical even if
that means that additional testing has to be done for other pieces of
software that are supported (or rely on supported components).

It's also fairly easy to backport things for the Ubuntu family, since
they keep things relatively up-to-date.  The problem in this case is
that GLib and the like add to, but don't take away from.  At least that
will be the case until version 3.0.  3.x of GLib, GTK+, GDK, and the
GNOME libs will remove deprecated functionality as I understand it,
though they won't be adding anything new beyond what they have been
doing for the last several releases.  At least it won't be like KDE's
major rewrite with every release.

	--- Mike

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