On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday at crashcourse.ca> wrote: > : > > when i asked the organizer to identify the specific version of RHEL > that was being used at the client site, i was told 5.3 so i can easily > install 5.3 on the classroom machines, but i'm curious about something > and i'll have my contact look into it: if people *initially* install > 5.3, is it standard behaviour to still regularly upgrade as new > releases come out? > Terminology: generally an upgrade refers to moving from one major release to another, whereas an update is moving forward to the newest sub-release. I.e., CentOS 5.5 -> CentOS 6.0 will be an upgrade (and not recommended as an upgrade per se), whereas CentOS 5.3 -> CentOS 5.5 is an update. > obviously, i have to ask my contact to verify what the client has > been doing all this time but, in general, what's the normal behaviour > for people running centos/rhel? and is there a way to examine an > install to see how updated it's been since that original installation? > Check /etc/redhat-release; also uname -a if you know which kernel to look for. > i just don't want to teach off of 5.3, only to find out later that > they've been keeping up to date and 5.5 would have been a more > appropriate choice. thanks for any tips. > They're both CentOS 5. The differences are mainly (but not exclusively) in security enhancements, upgrades to applications (like Firefox or OO) and the like. I would check to be sure if you think it will make that much difference (and it might - 5.3 is what, a year old now?). HTH Mark