The Fedora Legacy group is ending its support for Red Hat 7.3 and 9, and Fedora Core 1 and 2.
Older-model Fedora support will end with the release of Fedora Core 6 Test 2. Test 1 was released in late June. Test 2, described as a feature-complete and development-freeze release, had been scheduled for July 19, but its running late.
While exact numbers are hard to come by, there are still companies that use Red Hat 9 and Fedora Core 2 in their day-to-day operations. However, the numbers are no longer large enough for the Fedora Legacy group to justify expending resources to keep them going.
Red Hat ceased supporting Red Hat 9, along with the rest of the early Red Hat Linux distributions, in 2004. It was then that Red Hat was switching from its model of selling Red Hat Linux to users and businesses to its current successful RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) subscription model for businesses.
While some companies, most notably Progeny, then began offering support for older versions of Red Hat, the company ended that program in December 2005.
Red Hat support, however, hasnt come to the end of the road quite yet.