>Wow, really? Then why wouldn't RedHat or CentOS have a fixed updated >version in their repo? That seems egregious if what you say is indeed the >case.
RedHat (and CentOS, since their whole mission is to match RHEL feature-for-feature and bug-for-bug) believes that their Enterprise Linux customers value consistency over currency. They release updates to patch security holes, but their general attitude is that if Red Hat 5.0 shipped with foo_1.1.3 in 2007, then Red Hat 5.7 should also ship with foo_1.1.3 because their customers may have whole workflows built around the way foo_1.1.3 handles a specific command flag and foo_1.2.7 may have changed that. If necessary, they'll backport security patches from later versions of foo back to the current, leading to RPM names like foo_1.1.3-17.el5_7 -- but they won't add feature changes unless absolutely unavoidable. The downside is that when you run yum update on a CentOS system you won't have the newest foo features; the upside is that when you run yum update on a CentOS system you can be confident that your existing foo installation will not break. If you don't like that philosophy, there are a lot of other Linux (and other UNIX) distros out there. (I personally have an irrational affection for OpenIndiana -- all the crunchy goodness of Solaris without the Ellison tax-- but Ubuntu or Fedora might be better options if you're primarily familiar with Linux.) -- Dave Pooser Cat-Herder-in-Chief, Pooserville.com "...Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well-preserved piece, but to slide across the finish line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil, and shouting GERONIMO!!!" -- Bill McKenna
