[Yum] Documentation, RH8 support - newbie

[Paul]

I'm a newbie to yum.  Like many others I'm sure, the announcement by RH
that they were discontinuing all versions of Red Hat Linux took me by
surprise.  It was particularly annoying since I'd spent a lot of time
(I'm no expert) configuring a RH8 web server.

I found Up2Date very useful.  I subscribed to the demo version and
simply ran it via cron job once a week.

I imagine Up2Date for RH8 will be gone by the end of the year so time to
look for an alternative and yum got a mention on the MailScanner list.

So, just downloaded it and installed it.  Entered "yum" on the command
line and then had a guess and did "yum install".  Huge list of packages
were listed and got an error at the end.  Tried "yup update" after that
and 2 packages got updated.

In the meantime, I've been looking for documentation.  Can't find any at
http://www.linux.duke.edu/projects/yum.  I see references to a draft
Howto on this list, but can't find the actual Howto.  Can someone point
me to it?

More generally, I'm uncertain what to do regarding a Linux distro for my
server.  It isn't live yet so now is the perfect time to change distro
if need be.  I'm seeking stability above all else.  Apart from apps
included with RH8, I'm running MailScanner, SpamAssassin and 42go (a web
based management tool).  I access the server over the Internet.

My current web server is 3 years old and I imagine getting about the
same life out of the new one.  So, given I want to have minimal downtime
for 3 years (no complete reinstall during this time) then should I take
my chances with RH8 and use yum to apply security patches or bite the
bullet and switch to another distro?  The distros supported by
MailScanner and 42go limit me to SUSE, Debian or Mandrake.  I've had
recommendations for all of them, but if possible I'd rather just stick
with what I've got, so long as I could be confident that security
updates would be available for a few years.