[luau] Learning Linux on an Old Version?

[Warren Togami]

Dustin Cross wrote:
> Aloha,
> 
> I have to disagree with everyone here.  There is nothing wrong with using
> an old version of Linux to learn.  The problem you will have with an old
> version of linux is hardware support.  You have to use old hardware.  Once
> you get past that it depends on how much you already know.  If you have
> never used Linux or any Unix, then you will learn a lot.  You will learn
> about your hardware and how Linux uses it.  You will learn all of the basic
> user commands and the directory structure.  You will learn the init system
> for starting and stoping applications.  You will learn the difference
> between Linux, X, and window managers.  There will be tons of important
> things you will learn from using an old version of linux.
> 
> SNIP
> 
> If Redhat 5.2 is what you have, use it.  Dealing with all the hardware
> issues wil be a great lesson in itself.  Having to do the extra searching
> for the Redhat 5.2 or kernel 2.0 answer will be great learning.
> 
> 
> Later,
> Dusty

I wholeheartedly disagree.  New users have a hard enough time with any 
version of Linux.  Using an older version of Linux would mean the 
following problems:

* Many security holes, great effort needed to patch it.
* Red Hat 5.2 is so old that Red Hat long ago stopped releasing errata 
for it.  Securing the system would be fairly difficult and time 
consuming even for an experienced user because every source package must 
   be tracked down, checked for security, rebuilt, tested, etc.  In some 
cases hacking would be needed because the latest source package probably 
doesn't easily work on very old distros (glibc requirements?)
* Lack of auto-install tools.  It simply takes 100 times as long to get 
what you want installed, not to mention that most modern software wont 
run on your system because of the multitudes of old libraries.

Warren Togami
warren at togami.com