Escaping the End-of-Life Nightmare: Lessons from the Linux Graveyard

Speaker: Eric Hendricks

Room: HC 203

Time: Sat 3:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Format: Lecture (30 Min + Q&A)

Difficulty: Some experience required

Track: OSS Distributions

Presenter Location: In-person

Experience: umpteenth time speaking

Description:

End‑of‑life comes for every Linux system — sometimes quietly, sometimes in a blaze of panic when a power supply dies on a ten‑year‑old box still running RHAS 2.1. This session walks through the messy, real‑world decisions that follow when your favorite distro or application finally reaches its end.

The talk begins with the hardest question: Should you just retire it? From there, attendees will explore modern survival strategies, including:

Containerizing legacy applications that can’t yet run on the latest version

Using vendor‑supported extended‑lifecycle environments

Refactoring or rebuilding for long‑term sustainability

Along the way, Eric shares the hidden risks of “just one more year,” how to plan migrations without business downtime, and how to design upgrade and patching rhythms so you never end up in this nightmare again.

Whether you manage a data center full of CentOS 7 systems or a single forgotten PHP 7 web app, you’ll leave with a practical decision tree, cautionary tales, and a roadmap for keeping infrastructure alive without resurrecting the undead.

Learning Outcomes:

Identify key decision points when facing Linux EOL: retire, migrate, containerize, or extend

Evaluate safe modernization paths for legacy applications

Design repeatable upgrade and patching cycles to prevent future EOL crises

Target Audience:

SysAdmins