Okey, the title sounded too strong. I don't actually mean it that way. But the problem is, we are getting a lot of new members here posting for help with Redhat 9.0.

I usually take the time to sit and write long posts, link to other sources and at the end, I get a "I am using Redhat 9.0". That brakes my balls (<insert Cartman's voice here>)

We all know that Redhat 9.0 is pretty incompatible with today's hardware and even software is difficult to install on it with so many old packages. Even when Redhat 9.0 was supported, it was not very good either (with many users, including me, sticking with 7.3 and avoiding 8.0 altogether).

I don't know if a sticky would help saying that Redhat is old and that it will be difficult to give assistance or if encouraging the new member to fill in his profile during singing up would help. Because that would save us time writing long replies which won't be useful at all to the person asking for help.

Like or hate Redhat 9.0 (I do hate it, make no mistake) it was an important distribution and many of the books still around about Linux are aimed at RH9. But it is time to let it go, in my honest opinion. Redhat killed it, so I think we should somehow stop supporting it too =)

What do you think my friends? =)

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...833#post580833 - that's been around for ages. Basically, no one reads the stickies, that's why we rarely create them. Also, a lot of people load up RH9 and then join here to ask for help because FF3 or whatever will not install.

The best thing we can do is to quietly tell them that their distro is dead and obsolete and suggest a better alternative.

Kinda sad to hear =(. Tricky really put a lot of effort in there =)

I am guessing : Old Redhat bible or similar on sale,
RH 9 cdrom included.

Regards

So help them and point them to sites that tell them how to build RPM's to continue supporting their legacy distribution. That's my stance at least. To me it is counter productive to lecture members that their distribution is old and they only need to upgrade. Kindly point that out, then offer solutions to actually help them with their current problem, that's why they came here for, not to be lectured and told something they probably already know.

Also, just to note, Red Hat 9 was released back in 2003. Windows XP was released in 2001. Sure XP is still getting updates but not for long, but maybe that will give some the outlook that RH 9 really isn't that old. It's not officially supported but it's not impossible to keep updated, since last I checked, it's open source software.

But you don't see members telling every person they know that uses XP to upgrade to Vista and XP is full of security issues, malware, spyware and a very insecure OS, probably still less secure than RH 9.

but see, Red Hat 9 doesn't support most current hardware, and most the posters problems are that it doesn't support newer hardware. XP still supports most hardware and most people with new hardware probably have either downgraded, or built their own computer so they know this.

Like I said though, kindly tell them it's outdated but continue to try and help them. Just telling these people to go upgrade is like telling them to go RTFM, which we shouldn't do. And RH 9 can support newer hardware, recompiling a newer kernel is easy, teach them if you have to, remind them it might be a painstakingly process, but it is possible. I say for those that are only going to tell them it's outdated and they should just upgrade, just skip it over and allow those willing to help to reply.

The fact that Red Hat 9 is in the top five downloads over the last 30 days at LQ ISOis a testament to how popular it still is. I'd agree that we really need to discourage people from using it however. The distro really can't be made to support newer hardware easily and what's worse there are no security updates available for it. IMHO the correct suggestion is get a newer distro (with clear and easy to follow explanations of why and how to do so). If someones first experience with Linux is RH9, it will very likely be their last.

--jeremy

As like mentioned before, but I also believe unless their problem is virtually impossible to do with the version, the one replying should attempt to help them solve their problem, not just give them a lecture and leave it at that?

If they have RH9 already installed and it's a software issue, no reason to tell them to upgrade cause it's outdated so it supports more hardware, clearly at that point their hardware is supported or they probably wouldn't have it installed already.

If using RH9 is clearly an issue with members here and helping those that do decide to run it, perhaps LQ needs to put up a notice on the Download page saying a) RH9 is no longer supported by Red Hat, there are no security updates, you run risks running it, etc or b) just remove those downloads altogether.

Kind of silly to have it available for download but then tell people not to run it after they've installed it and they'll receive no help but a bunch of members telling them to just upgrade with a newer distribution. Don't you think?

Why is RH9 still available for download from LQ? I would guess (although I may be off base) that the majority of people that use the LQ ISO page are new to Linux (those that choose RH9 are probably doing so because they say to themselves, "Hey, I've heard of this one. Let me try it.") Those of us who have been around for a while will more than likely go directly to the site of our preferred distro or the site of a new distro we want to try. If we REALLY want to get a RH9 iso, we will be able to find it.

Jeremy, if you really want to keep links to unsupported ISO's, that is your decision, and I will back that by trying to help wherever I can (and not just say, "find a more recent distro"), but could we at least put the unsupported distros on their own page with some kind of click through warning?

My 2 pennies,

Forrest

I think forrestt's suggestion is a very good one. I actually never checked the link LQ ISO, but in a way, we are encouraging people to use Redhat 9.0, which I believe it is a problem for any modern computer.

I had no idea either. I never look or use the ISOs from LQ. If we encourage members to only upgrade RH9 and not deal with member problems directly with RH9 when they post their issues here, why do we have it available for download, without any warnings at minimal? Like I said, kind of silly.

No warning? There's a huge bolded note at the top of the page telling you it's not a supported product, and offering either Fedora or RHEL as alternative options.

--jeremy

I know you had a warning, but it isn't very noticeable (at least it wasn't for me). That's why I suggested putting unsupported distros on their own page with a click-through warning. I guess you could make the warning blink (NOOOOO!!!!!).

Forrest