I wrote an article about this back in Jan 2004:

http://www.seifried.org/security/redhat/20031230-redhat-support.html

I'd cut and paste it here but it's a tad long for an email. Here's the first
part:

Red Hat Linux versions 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 hit their end of life
December 31, 2003. Red Hat Linux version 9 hits end of life on April 30,
2004. As you are reading this paper on or after January 1st, 2004 the
support for Red Hat Linux 7.x and 8.0 is already ended.

This paper is not intended to reach any specific "solution", rather it is
intended to provide a list of alternatives, their benefits and problems, and
help users make the transition.

a.. Why Red Hat Linux 7.x, 8.0 and 9 matter
b.. Some points to consider
a.. Certification and vendor backing
b.. Business software cycles
c.. Software changes and updates and using the latest stuff
d.. Setting passwords
e.. Hardware support
c.. The solutions
a.. Continue using Red Hat Linux 7.x and 8.0
b.. Continue using Red Hat Linux 9
c.. Red Hat Advanced Workstation
d.. Red Hat Advanced Server and Enterprise Server
e.. Red Hat Fedora Linux
f.. WhiteBox Linux
g.. SuSE Linux
h.. SuSE Linux Enterprise
i.. Mandrake Linux
j.. Mandrake Linux Enterprise
k.. OpenBSD
l.. FreeBSD
m.. Solaris for Intel and Sparc
n.. Windows 2003
o.. Mac OS X Server
d.. Summary
a.. Cost matrix
e.. My conclusion
f.. A call to Red Hat

Kurt Seifried, kurt (at) seifried (dot) org [email concealed]
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http://seifried.org/security/

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