SuSE Linux Advisory: Discontinued SuSE Linux 7.1 Distribution

Dear suse-security-announce subscriber and SuSE Linux user,

With the release of the SuSE Linux 8.2 i386 ftp version, we announce that
the SuSE Linux 7.1 distribution will be discontinued for all
architectures.
Our SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) products and the products based on
SLES are not affected by this announcement.

Vulnerabilities found after Friday, May 16 2002, will not be fixed for
SuSE Linux 7.1 any more. After two years of successful use, SuSE Linux 7.1
will free resources for the newly released products. By consequence, the
7.1 distribution directories on our ftp server ftp ftp.suse.com have been
moved to the /pub/suse/discontinued/ directory tree structure; the 7.1
directories in the update trees will follow near the end of May, soon
after all pending update packages have been published.

SuSE puts much effort into adding security improvements (patches) to the
software. We usually do not publish new versions of a software package
because new features and changed behaviour of a single package can
jeopardize the seamless operation of the product as a whole. Over the
lifetime of a SuSE Linux distribution, this causes an increasing workload
on the SuSE Security Team and SuSE software engineering in general: The
older the product (and the package versions in it) is, the more work is
needed to prepare patches that fix security related malfunctions.
 This forces us to focus on the SuSE Linux distributions of a newer
release date to ensure that our customers can continuously take advantage
of the quality that they are used to with SuSE products.
 Please note that our SuSE Linux Enterprise Server products have a longer
support lifetime which is completely independent from the SuSE Linux
distributions. To learn more about the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server product
family, please visit http://www.suse.de/en/business/products/index.html .

As usual, SuSE will continue to provide update packages for the remaining
distributions
 SuSE-7.2
 SuSE-7.3
 SuSE-8.0
 SuSE-8.1
and
 SuSE-8.2

for a two-year period after the release of the respective distribution.

If you have any questions regarding this announcement, please do not
hesitate to direct your questions to security@suse.de (SuSE security
contact).

Regards,
Roman Drahtmüller,
SuSE Security.
 -                                                                      -
| Roman Drahtmüller      <draht@suse.de> // "You don't need eyes to see, |
  SuSE Linux AG - Security       Phone: //             you need vision!"
| Nürnberg, Germany     +49-911-740530 //           Maxi Jazz, Faithless |
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