Fedora and the System Administrator

[Erik Williamson]

Hi All,

I've looked around, read most of the archives on this list & have seen
the topic sort of mentioned, but not directly... so here goes:

I've got about 120 machines (servers & workstations) running 7.3 and 9.
  I was going to roll RH9 out department-wide, but then realized that 
it's end-of-life is scheduled for April 2004, which is smack-dab in the
middle of the semester.

I've recently been asked/told to limit OS releases to every 2 years.  I
feel that this is fair.

I've looked into RHEL; my "higher-ups" are VERY squeamish about paying
for anything.  I'm contemplating switching to another distribution with
longer life-cycles, but I'm very comfy with RHL, and don't want to switch.

(finally) My question is this:  What is the anticipated life-cycle for
Fedora releases?  I know that there will be core updates every four
months - by 'core' I gather this means kernel, gcc, glib, X, etc... but
how long will a core release last - is it based on popularity/stability?
  I've seen lots of talk about other companies that provide support for
end-of-life RH releases, and can assume that it will continue with
Fedora, but for a university with a $50M+ defeceit this year, paying is
not an option.

Any thoughts/views would be greatly appreciated -

Cheers & Thanks!
Erik.

-- 
e r i k   w i l l i a m s o n                     erik at cpsc.ucalgary.ca
  system admin . department of computer science . university of calgary