[techtalk] Older versions of distros

[Cathy James]

>Linux in general, and Red Hat in particular, have come a very long way in
>the last couple of years.  The GUI is the area which has changed the most
>dramatically.  With 5.0 you will have neiter Gnome nor KDE, and your
>libraries will be old enough that you won't be able to run a modern GUI
>without updating those too.  Also, many apps rely on newer libraries.

	Let's not make this sound harder than it is.  I am running Red Hat
4.2, and I didn't have any trouble downloading and installing the rpm's
needed to get KDE running.

	That said, I've got OpenLinux 2.2 at home and I plan to install
it on my new machine, and also replace the old RedHat 4.2 install on
my old machine (soon to become a server).  It's certainly true that
if you don't routinely download and apply patches as they become
available, after a while it is easier to start over.  This is also
a good reason to put your user files and applications on a partition
separate from your Linux boot/system partition(s).

	--Cathy James


************
techtalk at linuxchix.org   http://www.linuxchix.org