SUSE Linux Desktop 1.0 has reached End of Life

Published by

SUSE Linux Desktop 1.0 has reached End of Life

With the release of the python/pcre bugfix/security fix update we have now released the last maintenance update for SUSE Linux Desktop 1.0.

SUSE Linux Desktop 1.0 is now at its End Of Life, support is discontinued, and no more updates will be published.

So lets take a look back at its history...

SUSE Linux Desktop 1.0 was released end of May 2003, making its lifetime 4.5 years.

SLD 1.0 was the first true enterprise desktop SUSE published, previously existed just a lesser known add-on called SUSE Linux Office Desktop.

Currently the following SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop products exist and are in maintenance (regular / extended maintenance):
- Novell Linux Desktop 9 (until July 30th 2009/2011)
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (until July 31st 2011/2013)

Some interesting things:
- SLEC had a 50% package difference against UL1 core (411 additional source rpms, vs around 800 for UL1). NLD9 has around 17% (271:1570), SLED 10 has 0%.

- SLEC had a seperate kernel branch and stayed at 2.4.19 while SLES 8 went to 2.4.21.

Some bad things security wise:
- We were not able to update RealPlayer to RealPlayer 9 to fix security issues because version 9 does not work with the old glibc version. (glibc 2.3 vs 2.2.5)

- We had to stop updating Acrobat Reader to version 7 for the same reason.

- We were unable to continue upgrading Mozilla to after the Mozilla 1.7.x release due to mismatching gtk2 and xft library requirements.

Some statistics regarding our online updates:

Total: 380 (240 active)
Security: 324 (200 active)
Recommended: 41 ( 34 active)
Optional: 15 ( 6 active)

Top issues:
21 kernel
12 ImageMagick
12 cups
9 samba
8 gpg
7 openssh
7 mozilla (would have scored higher, see notes)
7 heimdal
6 rsync
6 libpng
6 java2
6 gaim
5 XFree86-server
5 openssl
5 OpenOffice_org
5 MPlayer
5 mc
4 XFree86-libs
4 qt3
4 libtiff
4 koffice-wordprocessing
4 kdelibs3
4 acroread (would have scored higher, see notes)
... others below 4 ...

Ciao, Marcus Meissner