On 05/08/16 09:07, Yura Beznos wrote:
> Yeah, thank you, it is very nice!
> 
> But what about sl(7.2) extras ? Why it is so old? 
> Every other rh based distro got newer packages with docker/kubernetes!

With every Enterprise Linux distribution, you must NOT look blindly on
the version number.  Enterprise Linux vendors hire a lot of people to
maintain, test and ensure that all needed features (within reasonable
limits) shipped have a certain quality and stability.

One of my best examples over all the years are actually dating back to
RHEL 5.  The latest kernel package there is named 2.6.18-410.el5.  The
interesting part is that RHEL 5 supports the KVM module, but that module
was first introduced into the 2.6.20+ versions.  So despite the kernel
being shipped in RHEL 5 carrying on old version number it doesn't mean
it doesn't support newer features.

All this is only possible through the work of the upstream Enterprise
Linux distributor (for SL, that means Red Hat).  And Red Hat does a lot
of backports of features found in many packages to older versions they
ship in RHEL.

So it is crucially important that you study the RPM changelog before
declaring it old.  To look at the changelog you can use this RPM command:

    $ rpm -q --changelog glibc | less


There is also another aspect when you start using packages outside of
the "normal" distribution repositories.  Red Hat (thus implicit SL) also
adds a lot of security and bug fixes, plus each package goes through a
QA process before being released.  Most of these fixes appears upstream,
but some do not as they might be specific to other packages installed.
That means your system can be more unstable or more insecure if you
decide to rely on external third-party repositories.  And the worst
situation occurs when third-party repositories don't follow the same set
of packaging guidelines; that can truly mess up your system.

If you just want a bleeding edge distribution with all the latest and
greatest, then Enterprise Linux distributions (like RHEL/SL/CentOS)
probably won't be a good choice for you.  If you rather want a long-term
(5-10 years++) stable and reliable system, then you most likely want an
Enterprise Linux distribution.


--
kind regards,

David Sommerseth


-- 
kind regards,

David Sommerseth