SuSE: Supported Distributions [SusE Announces Support plans for pre-7.0 distros]

Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 14:18:55 +0100 (MET)
From: Roman Drahtmueller <draht@suse.de>
To: <suse-security-announce@suse.de>
Subject: [suse-security-announce] Supported Distributions

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Effective Monday, March 19 2001, five weeks after the release of the new
SuSE-7.1 distribution, SuSE will discontinue support for the SuSE-linux
distributions SuSE-6.0 SuSE-6.1 and SuSE-6.2.

SuSE puts much effort into adding security improvements (patches) to the
software instead of publishing a new version; the same program with a fix
for a specific problem promises to work just as reliable as the original
version from the distribution, whereas new versions introduce new
functionality which changes the behaviour.
 In some cases however, especially if the security leak is based on
problematic design decisions or when the fix(es) are fairly large, the
only reasonable fix for a security problem is to update to a newer version
of the software. These newer versions tend to become incompatible with our
older distribution releases because of missing features in the operating
system environment. This forces us to focus on the distributions of a
newer release date.

The remaining distributions
 SuSE-6.3,
 SuSE-6.4,
 SuSE-7.0 and
 SuSE-7.1

for the Intel i386, AXP Alpha, SPARC as well as PPC Power PC platforms
will continue to be supported for a two-year period after the release of
the respective distribution.

Regards,
SuSE Security.