Thanks for all who replied. Like I said, this machine will be a web/mail/dns server, and not much else. All the major components are already in SUSE (SLES and 9.3). The stuff that I routinely update/rebuild are mostly postfix, amavisd-new and related packages. I don't know how SUSE feels about package versions being updated by the client (me) but I don't think they like it very much. Oracle isn't even a consideration - we have no reason to use that. The only third party database that might possibly make it's way onto this box is Intersystems Cache, but even that I sincerely doubt - that's not this box's job. I guess 5 years of updates makes sense, but then I don't plan to update SUSE Pro every six months. Whatever I put on will stay on until the box dies or it becomes absolutely necessary to upgrade the hardware. I'm not new to using SUSE's srpms/spec files to build newer versions of SUSE packages that will fit in nicely, and if it comes to that I'd be happy to do it. As it is we have a number of servers running various versions of SUSE Pro out in the field (smaller deployments, mostly P-IIs handling gateway/mail ect) so I'm doing a lot of that already - adding one more machine won't break my back. Thanks for all the feedback -- Kind Regards Hans du Plooy SagacIT (Pty) Ltd hansdp at sagacit dot com