After half a dozen years I am no longer officially a newbie; but
I reserve
the right to almost unlimited fumbling around.
What the gurus have been saying (I think) is that official
Redhat distros
of which RHEL 3 is one are supported by up2date. Yum is designed to work
with free distros. Redhat does not supply updates to yum formated
repositories.
I used up2date for years and strongly recommend it for
non-experts.
Though not as powerful or as cool as yum, it is much simpler for
fumblers. I
don't know what Redhat charges for a subscription nowdays - it used to be
$60/yr.
How much is your time and aggravation worth ?
Again as a dedicated fumbler and believer in "if it ain't broke,
don't
fix it" - if your RHEL system is running fine maybe skip updates
altogether.
(Insert angry scream about security problems- but I've found that with
really brutal firewall settings and dictatorial sysadmin policies this is
viable.)
HTH
Pat
