Hi

How long time does Mandriva support an older version with updates, after new versions has arrived?

I've looking on Mandriva.com, but I can't seem to find anything about it.
The reason I'm asking is that, I want to set up a server for home use and testing some CMS-development, so I need a system, which can run two maybe three years, and still get security updates.
My prefered system is Mandriva, but if I have to upgrade the system every year I'll find something els, it has to be a server which runs and collects some dust on the outside

Mandriva 2006 stopped getting updates about a couple of months ago. At this time they were doing yearly releases, but have gone back to six monthly releases now.

Mandriva 2007.0 was released late last year, so you got about 12-18 months on Mandriva 2006. Expect more or less the same for Mandriva 2007.0, and for 2007.1 may be less if there are six monthly releases.

You can run the system when the updates are no longer provided. I would suggest if you want something with updates regularly and you want to leave it for a few years, use CentOS.

http://www.mandriva.com/en/security/productlifetime

Longer support for servers is what server-targeted boxed versions are for. And it costs money.

If you want to do it for free, you have the option to update only each 12-18 months but I advise against this solution. Upgrade is sometimes not trivial from one version to the next and such an update is bound to skip at least one version; I recently did an upgrade from 2006 to 2007.1 and it was painfull; I wish I had gone earlier from 2006 to 2007, and then from 2007 to 2007.1.

Else you can try Debian. Besides its well-deserved reputation for being stable and suitable for servers, it is also known for having much longer release cycles than Mandriva.

Yves.

As the page jkerr linked states: 18 months for 'base' (which is really important packages like kernel, major servers etc) and 12 months for 'desktop'.

Thanks.

I think 18 month can do it, the server will purely be for home use.
I have thought on CentOS and Debian, but I prefer to use a system that I know.

My plans for the server is to use it for testing my CMS development, Samba sever (Backup) and mayby, thats just mayby, as a media-server.




Is that including PHP for server use?