linux_base end of life?

[Trevor Johnson]

> Hi

Hi!

> As far as I know, the linux_base packages and the port itself are based on
> RedHat 7.x. RedHat 7.x and 8.x reached end of life at the end of last year
> (2003-12-31). 9.x will reach it's end of life on the 30th of April 2004.
> There are no more security updates availble for redhat 7x/8x, and most
> probably neither for the current linux_base system.

There are a couple (RHSA-2003:325 and RHSA-2003:287) that haven't been
fully brought into the ports collection.

It's possible for us to prepare our own RPMs.

Red Hat 7.2 for the Alpha is supposed to be maintained by Hewlett-Packard.
I'm not sure whether they still keep up with updates for it.  They did as
recently as September.

> Are there any plans to switch to another linux distribution as base package?

Well, we have ports of Debian and Gentoo.  I haven't tried any of the
numerous RPM-based ports with either of those; my guess would be that with
Debian's "alien" facility, they could be made to co-exist with it, and
that much of what we have in the ports collection is available in Gentoo's
portage.  Other work they need is:

- update Gentoo port so it's fetchable for all architectures
- update Debian port
- add Alpha support to Debian port
- make a port of portage to accompany Gentoo port

Do you have suggestions for other Linux distributions that could go in the
ports collection?  Ones that support both Alpha and i386, are RPM-based,
have some popularity and can be downloaded would be ideal IMO.
-- 
Trevor Johnson