I'm so curious on this really. Red Hat dropped support and updates for this product since mid of 2004, not to mention how old is the software included. I still see people on the forum not only trying to resolve issues but to install Red Hat 9 also!

Ok, it wasn't a community project and maybe some people felt safe being under the umbrella of a company(I'm totally not supporting this way of thinking) but really, isn't obvious that not only it isn't safe when online but people is missing all the new and exciting software? Even the most desktop oriented distros can be used for a LAMP server very easy!

Wanna be under the hat? go to fedora
Wanna be a server? go to centOS

or just browse distrowatch

Really I'm eager to found out reasons for using red hat 9

Cheers,
Vangelis

Maybe 'cause it still works well enough for their needs?

They might like it, I know people still on Win 95!

Maybe yes but I can think of only if using a distro in which you developed an application for your company and cannot afford the upgrade. A distro that old is covering only historical needs..(not wishing to start a flame here)

Like it? windows 95? sounds to me a person who doesn't use a computer that often

Many Red Hat users are not aware Fedora, now in FC6, is the succesor for the open source arm of Red Hat. On the other hand Red Hat probably has more books written on it than any other Linux distro and people tend to think that is the real thing.

Linux has been moving at a frantic pace in the last few years and RH9 is way behind in speed, hardware recognition etc. As newbies are still trying Red Hat they also run into a lot of problems with LVM, Sata and booting. They are the main customers bringing in a lot of business(or questions) for the forum. If a forum relies on visitors and members these users are the life blood to the forum.

As long as RH9 users know that the out of the box installation doesn't support Sata, can't read a ntfs partition and can't write a ntfs partition (no ntfs-3g support provided) then that will be fine.

The trouble is they don't know and are still qeueing up to bang their heads against the same brick wall. If they read the forum posts they would see this brick wall is already soaked wet with blood but then again these users don't do searches. If they did they wouldn't had ended up with an obsolete Red Hat, would they?

I still keep my RH9 in the box for sentimental reasons. As the last Red Hat all the teething troubles were long gone and so it run satisfactorily if I do not ask it to do things outside its ability. The other relic I kept is the Debian Woody which gives a kick every time I run its 2.2 kernel.

If I would break it down I'd say that:
- 90% looks like pure uncut ignorance (as in not putting in any effort to be informed),
- 9.99999% may be due to availability problems (locations w/o possibility to get anything), and
- 0.00001% could legacy apps. Looking at what I encountered here at LQ that's so rare it's negligible.

Mainly management and organisation problem IMO.
Poorly documented or inexistant procedures to upgrade a software so that it runs on newer kernels/... , lack of knowledge for migration processes and testing strategies.
These machines or networks are heavens for the bad guys.

I'm only talking about companies here. For average-joe, yeah probably ignorance. Their IM is still working, why would they change?

Another reason could be that in most places Linux=Redhat and Redhat=Linux. This then results in people downloading Redhat 9 because they think its the latest version of the distro when in fact its not. Also it seems like many people do not research their distro before downloading and then find out that its old when they have problems installing it on new hardware.

Might be that it works and why start making changes in my servers if it is not necessary.

Now when I do upgrade my servers and infrastructure, then I will most likely go to CentOS.

Maybe its just the "9" throwing people off. They see RHEL 4, Fedora 6, and RH 9 and maybe figure that 9 must be the latest?????

Amen---
In a casual conversation with 2 colleauges, one said: "Linux---I've heard of that. Isn't it made by RedHat?"
This goes back to the big boom which included major media attention when RedHat went public.

Please don't insult Windows 95--that is what saved me from
"PowerMac hell" back in '96. Hard to believe that I would have seen it as a improvement...

Finally, we can generalize another statement above: People often do not research anything they buy...

New computer?
Yes--just got it today. It has dual-core technology
What's that?
I'm not sure, but the salesman said is was the latest thing. And I have the new Vista.
Is Vista better?
I'm not sure, but I think you need it to help with security.
Did you consider Linux?
Yes, but I heard it is socialist and no-one supports it. Besides, Bill Gates is such a wonderful philanthropist.

I found that even when you have done your research, the saleman doesn't.

Salesman: We've got dual-core chips!!!
Me: How much L2 Cache do they have?
Salesman: (Confused) I don't know...
Me: give me the box I'll have a look...

Some hardware manufacturers are very bad providing drivers. My previous desktop had a raid controller. The company that makes the driver doesn't supply source for it and only provides a kernel driver for a kernel that Red Hat 9.0 used.

If you want to use the controllers you are locked into this version of the kernel. Of course, I used Linux software raid instead. (Their "hardware raid" was only a bios supported software raid anyway.)

Yes, RedHat has a big name! The mention of Fedora previously also shows a little ignorance of the facts. RedHat 9 wasn't replaced by fedora! The two systems are entirely different in their approach. RedHat 9 was a fairly stable operating system that was good enough for the company to sell support contracts for. On the other hand, Fedora is latest stuff that isn't necessarily proven or stable.
Fedora is in a constant state of development and should be regarded as extremely experimental. Looking at it from that point of view, it's damn good! But I would not suggest its use to corporate or novice users.
The main problem today as I see it, is that the "stable" Linux versions aren't available anymore. It is as if the word stable has disappeared from the Linux community's vocabulary.
No one has mentioned RedHat 7.2
That oldie is still in use on many servers because it was almost bomb-proof!

Huh?

Slackware anyone?