[ok123456]

Using redhat before yum, meant visiting rpmfind.net and manually collecting what you needed.

In some ways, RHEL is still like that, because popular packages are usually a major version or two behind if they're even there at all. You have to hunt down an EPEL that has whatever you need.

[ethbr0]

Yeah, I don't miss the old days. Like another poster though, I remember apt-get being decent while pre-yum RedHat was still pretty bad.

But I also realize my perspective was that of a hobbyist, not an enterprise sysadmin who was probably upgrading to well-known versions through known paths.

[ok123456]

I worked with sysadmins who used rpm based distros back then and their experience was basically mine: hunting down the right rpms that both satisfied the constraints and actually worked.