[clue-talk] can't make this stuff up, folks...

[Collins Richey]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com> wrote:
> Real RHEL bug report.  Numerous friends have hit it under the CentOS
> copy-cat release.
>
> http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-19191
>
> Yup. You read that right.  All PS/2 keyboard support... busted... in
> RHEL 4.8.
>
> Still continually shaking my head at the title of "Software Engineer"...


That's not too surprising given a few facts.

1. RHEL4 is now ancient and probably not getting much attention.
2. RedHat is now a server company only grudgingly supporting desktop
systems that need a mouse.
3. You can scarcely buy a PS2 mouse anymore, so why bother testing.
4. They've done just as well with RHEL5. Somewhere between base 5 and
5.3 (or was it 5.4?), they managed to break LDAP support totally, so
we had to delay adoption until the next dot release.
6. Even 5.4 won't install on some newer HP desktops (NIC problem).

So, if you love aging software or your company has proprietary
products that only run on certain RedHat releases (my company in both
cases), at least you can rely on RedHat to supply delayed support or
the caveat "we don't support that" when something breaks. But the
legal beagles love it because you have a (worthless) support contract.

And, of course, you can't use a current released version of PHP or
Apache or MySQL without doing major RPM surgery.

-- 
Collins Richey
     If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
     of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.