At Sat, 22 May 2010 21:03:49 +0200 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote: > > Thanks for the quick replies. I understand now that CentOS 5 and all > 5.? versions are supported until 2014. How does this work with > security updates? Does each point release gets itÅ› own security > updates? In other words is it possible to install > CentOS 5.5 on a server and only apply security updates for 7 years? Or > is it required to upgrade to each point release in order to continue > receiving security updates? The 'point releases' ARE the security updates (or actually the consolidation of security (and other) updates). If you install 5.5 and do 'yum update' on regular basis, at some point (like in about 6-8 months maybe), you will find you are running 5.6 (this will happen automagically), and in like 6-8 months or so after that you will be running 5.7, and so on. Except for some rare cases, things will be 'binary compatible' and the *base* version of all CentOS supplied software (actually upstream vendor supplied) will be the same, but will have security and essential bug fixes back-ported. This will continue until sometime in 2014. The point releases are not really a new version, just update 'milestones' of a sort. Don't confuse CentOS 5.5 and CentOS 5 -- CentOS 5.5 is just CentOS 5 as of mid-May 2010 -- it is not distinct in any other way. Installing CentOS 5.5 is no different than installing using a CentOS 5.4 DVD and then doing a 'yum update' after completing the install. Note: there will be various between point release updates from time-to-time -- these will be placed in the 'updates' repo. The point release updates are a consolidation of these (and other less critical) updates and also mark points when new install media is created, and past updates are migrated to the 'base' repo and the 'updates' repo is zeroed out (although usually by the time a point release hits the bricks and few updates since its 'freeze' will have come along -- the 'updates' repo is only really figuratively zeroed out). Note: this is *very* different from how Ubuntu (for example) is numbered. Base Ubuntu 'version' numbers are just the year.month of the release: Ubuntu 10.4 is just the base release of April of 2010, it is NOT the 4th point release of the 10th major incarnation of Ubuntu. Don't confuse this 'version numbering' with how CentOS's versions are numbered. Fedora Core has no point releases. Each version is a completely fresh release. And they come out much more frequently than RHEL/CentOS. > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > > -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows heller at deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/