[HN Gopher] CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
___________________________________________________________________
CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
Author : rwky
Score : 292 points
Date : 2020-12-08 14:20 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lists.centos.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (lists.centos.org)
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| Just upgraded to CentOS Stream from CentOS 7, so far so good.
|
| Contrary to most commenters, I am actually optimistic. I switched
| to Arch on the desktop a decade ago because I was tired of having
| to often nuke and pave my install every 6 months. I am still with
| Arch all these years later, even for my work machine and I work
| as a programmer so instability wouldn't fly.
|
| Obviously the support window for CentOS was much, much longer,
| but if they're careful we can perhaps have the convenience of a
| rolling release with the stability of RHEL, or close to then more
| power to them.
|
| My only concern is the short EOL window for current CentOS 8
| users.
| adamc wrote:
| Seems like RedHat wanting to make CentOS a less "safe"
| alternative to RHEL.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Just move to Ubuntu / Debian it's the logical choice here. Ubuntu
| is already the #1 distro on server, it will consolidate that
| poistion even more.
| lars_francke wrote:
| Can you back that number up?
|
| In my corner of the world Ubuntu plays no role at all on
| servers. It's all CentOS/RHEL here.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Ubuntu is by far the most used Linux distro on server, the
| problem with CentOS / RHEL is they did not support recent
| kernel for a long time, so you see very few cloud servers
| with those distro, especially since Docker / Kubernetes took
| off. Also RHEL is not free so there is no way it's "popular"
| outside of very enterprise needs ( HPC ect ... ).
|
| At previous work they moved away from CentOS to use Ubuntu
| because libc was just to old, actually everything was old.
| lars_francke wrote:
| I'd actually be interested to see those numbers. Do you
| have any evidence to support that claim?
|
| It'd be very interesting for us in terms of priorising
| supported distros. A bit of googling didn't lead to much.
|
| You could be biased by your own job/experience. Most IT
| doesn't run on the Cloud or in Kubernetes (yet).
| [deleted]
| Jedd wrote:
| The writing's been on this wall since at least 2014, when RedHat
| took over CentOS. Having a free gateway to your paid product is
| fine, but at some point you need to give potential customers a
| nudge they can't refuse.
|
| Pre-2014 it was fairly obvious that a full clone of a
| commercially supported product, with the proverbial 'just a
| search-and-replace of the product name', was going to attract
| interest & action from upstream.
|
| OTOH in the ~25 years I've been using Debian, I've never been
| (rudely) _surprised_ by one of their announcements. Their social
| contract [0] is clear on every point that 's relevant to users of
| an OS, especially users looking to commit long term to a
| platform.
|
| [0] https://www.debian.org/social_contract
| loloquhwonedeo wrote:
| Not really the first time Red Hat leaves users high and dry -
| also happened when they made Red Hat non-free with Fedora (then
| very unstable) as an alternative. I moved to Debian, never looked
| back, and today I regret it less than ever :)
| Tsiklon wrote:
| I used to work for a hosting firm who had large numbers of
| customers making use of CentOS for their pre-production
| environments, running RHEL for their production.
|
| This announcement is a kick in the teeth to those customers, as
| the transition to RHEL 8 for these pre-production environments
| will feel very much like a shakedown.
|
| I feel this is tremendously damaging for Red Hat's reputation and
| the goodwill developers had towards them.
| cwyers wrote:
| Red Hat has developer licenses. It might not end up being a
| shakedown, depending.
| dpedu wrote:
| Is this change really so dramatic for pre-prod use? It sounds
| like centos will still be around although as the upstream of
| RHEL, which I interpret to mean less tested or stable. But as
| far as compatibility between it and RHEL, shouldn't that
| improve? Why isn't this good enough?
| kcb wrote:
| So CentOS is no longer relevant for production use. I wonder who
| stands to benefit. I really don't see it driving more sales to
| RHEL like the execs probably predict.
| jsiepkes wrote:
| RedHat will probably get a one time boost in RHEL sales at the
| expense that the void created by the CentOS project will be
| filled by some CentOS-fork they have no control over.
|
| Maybe they have some grand scheme I'm not seeing but it feels
| short sighted.
| adamc wrote:
| Arguably, IBM has done a lot of short-term things in recent
| decades.
| breakingcups wrote:
| Until IBM / Red Hat acquires that fork just like they did
| CentOS
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| A community-controlled organization could just opt to not
| be acquired (and indeed should, given this precedent).
| toyg wrote:
| This sort of cloning effort tend to live in contractual
| grey areas. Would that community (of people who got
| together to avoid paying for licenses) be ready to pay to
| defend developers from expensive lawsuits filed by one of
| the wealthiest corporates on the planet? Or rather, would
| developers in charge of such projects believe that? An
| acqui-hire with fuck-you money on one side, vs years of
| pain and likely bankruptcy - it's not really a choice, is
| it?
| thinkmassive wrote:
| > If you are using CentOS Linux 8 in a production environment,
| and are concerned that CentOS Stream will not meet your needs,
| we encourage you to contact Red Hat about options.
|
| ...sounds like what they expect
|
| > it removes confusion around what "CentOS" means in the Linux
| distribution ecosystem
|
| This justification for the change seems like a solution to a
| problem that doesn't yet exist but probably will soon!
| posix_me_less wrote:
| Well said. The "confusion" was probably only in Redhat, when
| developers were confronted with explaining to executives why
| they provide RHEL for free.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Agreed. I never thought there was any confusion about what
| CentOS meant. This feels like B.S.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| To me it was literally the most straightforward Linux
| distro: RHEL without the license & trademarked material
|
| I've been leaning on Debian-based distros for my own
| servers for a while now, but I still use CentOS in the lab.
| Hopefully RedHat provides an easy way to legally develop on
| RHEL without messing with a license.
| kklimonda wrote:
| RedHat provides developer subscriptions to their
| products: https://developers.redhat.com/articles/getting-
| red-hat-devel...
| thinkmassive wrote:
| Thanks for the link! Seems like an oversight that it was
| left out of the CentOS Stream announcement.
|
| Summarizing the FAQ: - the bits are the
| same, the differences are the terms of use and the self-
| support level - one subscription per user -
| allowed to use on 1 physical system (up to 2 processor
| sockets, 16 VMs)
| mattdm wrote:
| And this will be expanding to cover more use cases. See
| https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-
| updates#Q10:
|
| _In the first half of 2021, we will be introducing low-
| or no-cost programs for a variety of use cases, including
| options for open source projects and communities, partner
| ecosystems and an expansion of the use cases of the Red
| Hat Enterprise Linux Developer subscription to better
| serve the needs of systems administrators and partner
| developers._
| elteto wrote:
| And these licenses and subscriptions come and go at the
| whim of the corporations that own them. Nobody informed
| would base their open source project/community/ecosystem
| on something like this, unless they want to be left out
| in the cold when the plug gets pulled in the future.
| shawnz wrote:
| Surely even less so now that they have demonstrated they
| have no problem pulling the plug on CentOS.
| Macha wrote:
| See today's other news about Travis for an example of why
| curt15 wrote:
| How about discounts for universities? They could take a
| page from Microsoft, which introduces students and
| teachers to its ecosystem with low-cost versions of
| Windows and Office.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I bet lots of users will migrate to Oracle Linux and some of
| them will become paid users in the future.
| GNOMES wrote:
| Rolling release doesn't mean bleeding edge... Sounds like some of
| you never update
| DCKing wrote:
| What was the point of Red Hat taking over CentOS then?
|
| If they're just transparently killing of the "free version of
| RHEL", that surely won't work in anything but name? There's an
| obvious need for a 1:1 RHEL clone, and due to the license of all
| software that RHEL builds on, there's no way IBM or Red Hat can
| stop people from actually building their own "new CentOS" and
| many companies and communities have done so in the past.
|
| All we have now is Red Hat taking the CentOS branding and running
| with it. And even that point I don't get - they could have done
| this with plain RHEL or Fedora branding too.
|
| I get why Red Hat or IBM doesn't like CentOS' existence, but I am
| fully expecting this won't kill "CentOS the concept". This
| sequence of events boggles my mind really.
| centimeter wrote:
| > What was the point of Red Hat taking over CentOS then?
|
| Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
|
| They're probably banking on it taking a few years for a
| standard centos replacement to be established.
| kbenson wrote:
| What I'm wondering is how open the CentOS build tooling is at
| this point, and to a lesser degree how open it was in the
| past and when it changed if it did.
| kbenson wrote:
| > All we have now is Red Hat taking the CentOS branding and
| running with it. And even that point I don't get - they could
| have done this with plain RHEL or Fedora branding too.
|
| Yeah, it's all very confusing. The only thing I can think of at
| the moment is that CentOS has so much mind-share that RHEL
| wants to tap into that and funnel it back to themselves more
| effectively. It used to be people knew what Red Hat was and you
| had to tell them about CentOS, now so many people use and know
| CentOS I think there's probably a good chance a lot of them
| don't even know that it's a respin of RHEL.
|
| All of this only makes sense to me if the whole point is to
| leverage the popularity of CentOS into more RHEL subscriptions
| by providing a product that's more annoying for most people
| that care about a stable server (because it's backing their
| business) to use because it's less static.
|
| Personally, I think it doesn't matter _why_ Red Hat bought
| CentOS, what matters is what they just did, and as I think that
| 's purely self serving (and to the detriment of the public and
| community) and if there are apologist engineers here that work
| for RH, perhaps they should look closely at how management is
| _managing them_ , because of course management is going to
| present it in a way that tries not to alienate their staff and
| community. The results speak for themselves though, CentOS in
| the form that so many people relied on is effectively dead in a
| year.
| DCKing wrote:
| That's a good explanation, but I'm sad they're committed to
| just wasting everybody's time.
| toyg wrote:
| Companies' strategies change with time. RH took over CentOS in
| 2014, but then was itself bought by IBM last year. So what was
| the plan (and the leadership) in 2014 is not necessarily the
| plan (and the leadership) in 2020.
|
| Also, conditions change. RH might have decided that Centos had
| become a bit too successful and was cannibalizing actual RHEL
| sales (covid year, everyone is hurting, people try to skimp on
| licenses...).
| ossusermivami wrote:
| I am down to make a fork, like the original CentOS before they
| sell out, who's in ?
| IceWreck wrote:
| What are the chances that someone starts another community
| project like CentOS where they remove the licenses and stuff from
| upstream RHEL and distribute it under a new name
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Already happening. The guy who started CentOS is coordinating
| the new project. You can view the progress on Slack.
|
| https://join.slack.com/t/hpcng/shared_invite/zt-gy0st6mt-ijg...
| charlesdaniels wrote:
| Having been a Debian/Ubuntu person for a long time, and being
| somewhat dissatisfied with that ecosystem, I recently started
| evaluating CentOS for my use cases instead. I want something with
| a non-rolling update model, so I don't have to deal with my
| environment changing out from under me.
|
| CentOS 8 had been mostly working well for me, barring a few
| missing packages that were easy to port over myself, and I was
| really thinking of moving all my boxes to CentOS. I'm glad this
| news came out before I did; I don't know what I'll use instead,
| but it definitely won't be CentOS/RHEL.
| mattdm wrote:
| I think there might be some confusion about "rolling" in the
| context of CentOS Stream. The updates are continuous and
| there's not released minor versions, but all changes are
| changes that are intended to _very shortly_ land in the next
| every-six-months minor release of RHEL. So you aren't going to
| suddenly see more "environment changing out from under me" than
| you would on RHEL or CentOS Linux.
| cesarb wrote:
| Yeah, to me this whole thing sounds like a failure of
| communication.
|
| Most people (including me) never looked closely at "CentOS
| Streams"; from what you said, it seems like it's "a preview
| of the next RHEL 8.x". The announcement today made it appear
| as if it were "a preview of RHEL 9.0", which is a much bigger
| change for those who (like me) expect to install a CentOS 8
| box somewhere and keep it mostly untouched (just applying the
| updates) for ten years.
| GrayShade wrote:
| Thank you for the answers in this thread.
|
| I haven't tried CentOS Stream, but out of curiosity: if it's
| similar to the RHEL patch releases, how will major (like from
| RHEL 8 to 9) changes be handled?
| pnutjam wrote:
| OpenSuse, and Suse give you more control over minor release
| version changes. You have to manually change your repos with
| some scripts before you patch. The RH way of just rolling you
| from minor release to minor release invisibly has always kind
| of irritated me.
| donmcronald wrote:
| Minor version updates in CentOS usually mean a new kernel ABI
| and things like ZFS break. I always have to wait to do minor
| version updates until a new ZFS version lands. Any idea how
| that'll work?
| stryan wrote:
| Checkout openSUSE; I've been running it for the past year or so
| for my personal projects (and their rolling-release version for
| longer) and I've been pretty happy with it. It's not quite the
| same position as CentOS but still very stable and nice to work
| with.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I don't know what your use case is, but one of the flavors of
| BSD might be an option for you.
| charlesdaniels wrote:
| I am a big fan of OpenBSD, but unfortunately I still need
| some Linux only software. I do try out freeBSD's Linux
| emulation layer every couple years, but it isn't quite there
| yet for the stuff I need to run.
| nix23 wrote:
| OpenSuse Leap, with XFS or BTRF sounds right for you.
| syshum wrote:
| I am not sure how CentOS Stream makes any sense. CentOS stands
| for Community Enterprise Operating System, how on earth can
| CentOS Stream be called an Enterprise operating System?
| speeder wrote:
| It is also not community-based anymore anyway.
|
| So now it is just "Operating System", maybe they should rename
| it IBMBetaOS or something like that.
| curt15 wrote:
| Would it make sense to regard CentOS Stream as essentially
| CentOS/RHEL Beta?
| xernus wrote:
| Yes.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I mean they say "no", but it's definitely something less
| than the full production release.
| lmns wrote:
| It's basically the beta of the next RHEL minor release, not a
| beta of a next major release.
| symlinkk wrote:
| I have a feeling they are going to switch RHEL to the same model
| that Ubuntu follows, where it's free to download and use, with no
| license to worry about or anything, and then there's an optional
| support contract you can add to it if you want paid support.
| awill wrote:
| This is awful. It's proof of the downsides to the IBM
| acquisition, which I think we all knew was coming. Imagine if you
| were running a business, and deployed CentOS 8 based on the 10
| year lifespan promise. You're totally screwed now, and Red Hat
| knows it. Why on earth didn't they make this switch starting with
| CentOS 9???? Let's not sugar coat this. They've betrayed their
| users.
|
| I personally run a CentOS 7 server (as do members of my family),
| and was planning on upgrading them all to 8. Luckily, I didn't
| get round to it yet. I guess I'll have to consider an
| alternative. For my server I want a boring, stable OS, so I'm
| definitely not using Streams. This is going to ripple throughout
| the whole industry, as CentOS is used all over the place, from
| regular home users to businesses (and things like CloudLinux).
|
| It's very disappointing that Red Hat can't see the damage they'll
| do not only to the community, but to themselves too. Someone will
| come along and take the CentOS user base, and it won't be Red Hat
| :(.
| qz2 wrote:
| Yeah we have some now ageing CentOS 7 crap to clear up. The
| obvious choice was CentOS 8 but that is now uncertain. I'm glad
| I was too busy to take this on earlier in the year.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Yes this hurts. My use case is specific: I'm a dev but since
| we're 2 in the IT service with barely any budget I'm also a
| (modest) sysadmin and they also call me when the printer or the
| TV doesn't work.
|
| So a few years ago when Debian decided to have faster release
| cycles I migrated all my VM to CentOS: once the OS is installed
| I don't want to think about it for the next 10 years.
|
| I still didn't finish my Windows 7 to 10 on all my desktops,
| I'm swamped with users wanting to do Zoom / Teams / Skype /
| Whatever visio conferences, I have 3 new dev projects for 2021
| and now I have to migrate all my CentOS VM...
|
| Yeah, thank you RedHat I won't forget / forgive that.
| ossusermivami wrote:
| nothing is really free in this word! I think rollling your
| own distro is the only way to truly be free!
| ueshiba9 wrote:
| Agree! It is the beauty of open source to build it you own
| way. Google or other giants build their own distro as well,
| but they have enough talented people to maintain it
| ueshiba9 wrote:
| So let's recap, you don't have budget to spend on Linux but
| pay Microsoft for Windows and probably Office... And now you
| are angry for allegedly not having a 10 year support for your
| OS, so you can avoid some work on upgrading or migrating the
| VMs. I suspect you should be running VMware as well (and
| paying for it), instead of KVM or some other open source
| hypervisor. If the VMs are on a public cloud, you are paying
| for it indirectly as well. You may have some additional work
| indeed, but you saved a lot on not spending on a paid Linux
| distro, being Red Hat's or any other distro, therefore it
| should be worth it... take that into account
| [deleted]
| mmcgrath1 wrote:
| Before giving up on us just yet, I'd encourage you to check
| out our developer program for proper RHEL that's free. And
| I'd stay tuned for announcements that are coming in the first
| half of 2021 (as mentioned in our FAQ). You might find we've
| got a program for you:
|
| https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q10
| vetinari wrote:
| T&C for your developer program doesn't allow for running it
| in production; which is exactly what many CentOS users do.
|
| No, they won't migrate to paid RHEL. This is massive
| goodwill burn for RH.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| You don't get it: I have no budget, if it's not free it
| doesn't happen. And I'm certainly not going to trust Red
| Hat now that they pulled support 8 years earlier than
| promised.
|
| I have nothing against you in particular, but if you know
| the guys that made this decision tell them the same words
| that Linus Torvalds said to Nvidia.
|
| I will never touch anything Red hat ever again because I
| will remember how after a quite sucky 2020, Red Hat made
| sure my 2021 would not disappoint either.
| daxelrod wrote:
| I appreciate you commenting.
|
| I think people would panic less if the CentOS Linux
| cancellation were announced at the same time as these
| upcoming announcements. Without them, there's a lot of
| uncertainty and it's hard for anyone depending on CentOS 8
| to plan.
| awill wrote:
| If there truly is a free RHEL release for certain use cases
| being announced in H1 2021, there's absolutely no excuse
| not to announce it now. You've terrified a LOT of people.
| Giving a 'well maybe next year we'll announce a solution'
| is not a response.
|
| You've burned people. Don't expect to then sell them Aloe
| Vera.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Are you saying we should (mis)use a program designed to
| give free RHEL for development/testing only, and use it in
| production as well?
| [deleted]
| cozzyd wrote:
| The EL6 EOL was a bit over a week ago, meaning that likely a
| large number of people just migrated from EL6 to EL8 (skipping
| EL7).
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| >> Imagine if you were running a business, and deployed CentOS
| 8 based on the 10 year lifespan promise. You're totally screwed
| now, and Red Hat knows it.
|
| The hypothetical you posed is the actual situation, I am now
| learning, I have apparently forced on my team. We've ramped up
| labor 3x revenue preparing product launch in 90 - 180 days. We
| created an image containing centos 8 , Java , postgres and
| tomcat a year ago and that what is deployed to beta clients and
| what we've been testing.
|
| What's ironic is that I sort of went out on a limb with my team
| by forcing us to go with Linux over Windows and the way I
| allayed concerns was to ask them to just "wait and see" in
| hopes that the performance differential would make it a moot
| point.
|
| edit: after a little thought it seems that moving to RHEL might
| cost us the least amount of money and downtime. Still sucks and
| not what we need to be working on right now.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Consider downgrading to CentOS 7. It should work for 4 more
| years.
| p49k wrote:
| Running modern versions of software on CentOS 7 can be a
| giant pain due to the old version of glibc that's baked in.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I was supporting CentOS 6 until about a couple weeks ago.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Java and Postgres will work.
| [deleted]
| fweespeech wrote:
| > edit: after a little thought it seems that moving to RHEL
| might cost us the least amount of money and downtime. Still
| sucks and not what we need to be working on right now.
|
| And that is exactly what IBM is counting on. Vendor lock in.
|
| We are switching to Debian-based distros because, frankly, we
| don't trust IBM not to knife us in the back even on RHEL for
| more money. Of course we have the advantage of being able to
| take the time to convert.
| bonzini wrote:
| This is not about IBM. It may not be a pleasant change for
| everyone, but it's a change that has strictly technical
| motives.
|
| CentOS was acqui-hired because Red Hat's upstream for
| layered products (at the time mostly RDO/OpenStack and
| oVirt/RHEV) could not use Fedora because it was too far
| from RHEL a year of two after RHEL was released, could not
| use RHEL because upstream contributors would have to pay,
| and could not use CentOS because its releases had too large
| delays. The solution was to make CentOS releases happen
| timely by paying people to make them.
|
| These days a RHEL downstream is not enough for the layered
| products. Some of them require the kind of bleeding edge
| feature that is backported every six months to the RHEL
| kernel, and corresponding userspace changes (BPF,
| virtualization, etc.) and cannot afford waiting for the
| CentOS release because development must be done in parallel
| with RHEL. So the solution was to move CentOS from
| happening _after_ RHEL to _before_ RHEL which is what
| CentOS Stream is.
|
| I can confidently say that the reasons are technical
| because other CentOS downstream have the same needs (e.g.
| Facebook's) and they also want to send patches to CentOS
| for bugfixes or features themselves, instead of waiting for
| Red Hat to find out about that bug, or decide they need the
| same feature. Plus there's no reason for rebuilds to
| disappear. The SRPMs will still be released by Red Hat.
| kbenson wrote:
| That in no way explains why they don't continue to have
| both. They indeed will have both for another year. There
| was no requirement the Stream product even use the CentOS
| name.
|
| CentOS was a community project whose leadership and
| control was taken over (acqui-hired as you say) by Red
| Hat and then it's core use case for the majority of
| people actually using it was discontinued. That is a
| statement of facts that happened as I understand them,
| not some spin on my part.
|
| If Red Hat had not stepped in, perhaps some of CentOS
| problems (trouble getting releases out on time) would
| have been worse, or perhaps some other companies would
| have stepped in. We don't know, but we do know that
| CentOS has not been changed to be something different
| than it was before. It used to be a free re-spin of RHEL.
| Going forward it's something entirely different.
|
| Red Hat always had the option to stop funding/providing
| resources to CentOS and name their new thing something
| else, but they didn't, and now they've effectively co-
| opted CentOS to be something different than it was
| originally intended to be.
| bonzini wrote:
| > That in no way explains why they don't continue to have
| both
|
| Because they don't need it anymore. CentOS Linux or other
| rebuilds can still exist (just not using the name; I
| disagree with that but I can understand Red Hat doesn't
| want its name attached to something that might have large
| delays in security fixes in the future) if somebody funds
| it or volunteers to do it, just like CentOS still
| supports Xen but RHEL does not.
|
| Also for what is worth there have been lots of
| engineering changes to RHEL in the past couple of years
| that make nightlies (and CentOS Stream) much more stable
| than they used to be, especially with respect to
| regressions. Running CentOS Stream is not going to be
| like Fedora Rawhide or Debian sid.
| kbenson wrote:
| >>> it's a change that has strictly technical motives.
|
| I understand the business reasons for doing so. I don't
| agree with anyone branding this as done for purely
| technical reasons. Having CentOS Stream may be needed for
| technical reasons. Stopping CentOS 8 is in no way a
| technical decision. They are unrelated in any technical
| sense.
|
| If Red Hat just doesn't want to put resources towards
| CentOS as it traditionally existed anymore, that's their
| option, but they deserve any flak they get for taking
| over an open source project just to extinguish it, since
| CentOS is in no way really needs to be linked to their
| Stream product. They could just as easily called it RHEL
| Stream and said it's free, and it would be a less
| confusing and more direct funnel of people that want RHEL
| stability into RHEL subscriptions. Using the CentOS name
| is just a mind-share grab and screwing over an open
| source community. They control it so can do it, but that
| doesn't mean I'm not going to call them out for doing so.
| arbitrage wrote:
| > That in no way explains why they don't continue to have
| both.
|
| They're a business ... are you honestly and in good-faith
| actually confused about this outcome?
| zymhan wrote:
| Oh come now, this is Red Hat, a company based on Open
| Source software. We're not wrong for wanting to hold it
| to a higher standard. They have benefited from the OSS
| community just as they have contributed to it.
| kbenson wrote:
| I'm not confused at all about that. I was responding to
| the point that said "it's a change that has strictly
| technical motives." It's a _business decision_ that 's
| based on profit and positioning and name mind-share, so
| let's not hide that.
| wronglebowski wrote:
| Out of curiosity why did you decide to deploy your
| application as a VM image? Is there a reason you didn't go
| with a Helm chart or other container native deployment?
| Qerub wrote:
| > It's proof of the downsides to the IBM acquisition, [...]
|
| I think the movement to this outcome already started in January
| 2014 with this event:
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-incorporates-free-red-...
| bluedino wrote:
| >> Imagine if you were running a business, and deployed CentOS
| 8
|
| Sadly, the danger of running on free software.
|
| Even more sadly, this puts a bad taste in peoples mouths,
| making them hesitant to start new projects on free software.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| ... as opposed to paid/proprietary software, that never
| breaks compatibility, hikes prices, or screws over their
| customers?
| kcb wrote:
| At least they don't advertise a support period then cut it
| 8 years short.
| symlinkk wrote:
| You're conflating "free software" with "community
| support". It's possible to run free software with a paid
| support contract backed by a corporation - thats what
| RHEL offers, and Ubuntu with their Ubuntu Advantage
| program.
|
| CentOS offered free software, but with unpaid community
| support, which isn't guaranteed at all as there's no
| contract.
|
| This is an unpopular opinion but this is why I prefer
| Ubuntu over Debian - there's a corporation on the other
| end that's being paid to update software, and if you
| choose, you can always upgrade to paid support that is
| backed by a legally binding contract.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Companies do this all the time especially when there's an
| acquisition or change in management. In some cases they
| may technically still support it but with ever growing
| bugs, security issues and so on.
| arbitrage wrote:
| Running a business on a free product. That you knew RedHat
| acqui-hired. That you knew they had a history of using products
| such as to wedge people into a paying bracket.
|
| Cry me a river.
| apecat wrote:
| Wonder if the web hosting industry will rebel and build another
| RHEL clone project that just gets the 10-year supported
| patches. Red Hat still has to release the patches, right?
|
| A really big chunk of the world's traditionally shared hosted
| websites run on CentOS, because most commercial control panel
| packages and hosting automation systems are built for that. A
| rebadged CentOS is also AWS's default distro.
|
| Wonder of the hosting industry, AWS included, will build a new
| stable clone of RHEL 8's upstream security patches. There are
| some big companies, like GoDaddy in there, whose business
| models are unlikely to accommodate for RHEL support
| subscriptions.
|
| This is truly a bummer, and if someone doesn't pick up the
| pieces and continue offer RHEL rebranded, there's no(?) open
| sauce operating system with a decade-long support lifecycle. I
| wonder if this might cause an increase in unpatched servers and
| appliances when the alternatives offer five years at best.
| mattdm wrote:
| > Red Hat still has to release the patches, right?
|
| Whether or not Red Hat "has to", Red Hat is an all open
| source company and does and will.
| toxic wrote:
| Redhat is a fully-owned subsidiary of IBM.
|
| IBM is open source friendly, but the days of RH being an
| "all open source company" ended in July 2019.
| bonzini wrote:
| Red Hat is still all open source, its owner isn't.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > Red Hat still has to release the patches, right?
|
| I think that's a gray area. For example RHEL has some support
| branches where they'll produce security updates for minor
| updates. For example you can pay a lot of money and you'll
| get RHEL 7.2 with security updates. They won't release
| sources for those packages unless you'll ask for those
| packages (you, as a paid client, not you as nobody in the
| Internet). But if you'll ask sources and then publish those
| sources in the internet again and again, so other entity like
| CentOS or whatever could pick them up and build CentOS 7.2
| LTS, they will terminate your contract.
|
| So that's a weakness in GPL. You won't break any law, but
| they'll just terminate contracts with those who publish those
| sources. So those sources are effectively unavailable for a
| large public.
|
| Currently they publish their mainstream branch sources to the
| public. But they could stop doing that any time and only
| provide those sources to their clients on request.
| wang_li wrote:
| > They won't release sources for those packages unless
| you'll ask for those packages (you, as a paid client, not
| you as nobody in the Internet).
|
| If the code in question is licensed under the GPL and Red
| Hat isn't the owner of the code, then I as a rando on the
| Internet can ask them for the source and if they don't
| provide it, the person who does own the code can sue them
| and revoke their license to distribute said code. And I'd
| say that the majority of code in RHEL is not owned by Red
| Hat.
| dralley wrote:
| That is not how the GPL works. The GPL only entitles you
| to the source code of software for which you have been
| provided binaries. If the software has not been provided
| to you in binary form, you have no claim to the source.
|
| This is why the cloud providers can get away with custom
| in-house patches to the Linux kernel.
| bonzini wrote:
| You can only ask them for the source if you already have
| the binaries and you've gotten them from Red Hat. If you
| got the binaries from someone else, you can ask that
| someone else.
| wang_li wrote:
| Can you help me understand why GPL v2 3(b) doesn't
| obligate Red Hat to provide source code for the kernel,
| as an example, to anyone who asks?
|
| >3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work
| based on it, under Section 2) in object code or
| executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above
| provided that you also do one of the following:
|
| > b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at
| least three years, to give any third party, for a charge
| no more than your cost of physically performing source
| distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the
| corresponding source code, to be distributed under the
| terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily
| used for software interchange; or,
| bonzini wrote:
| Because Red Hat offers source code following section 3(a)
| instead. Thus, section 3(b) does not apply.
| wang_li wrote:
| Really? When I do a yum update on my rhel systems to get
| the latest updates from rhn, they never download the
| source code. Now that I think about it, I don't think RH
| has even sent me any kind of medium which is commonly
| used for interchange.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I think that access to the private repository is
| considered a distribution. You have access to the sources
| with `dnf download --source` or something like that. The
| fact that those sources originally are on the remote
| server probably is not significant in 2020.
| [deleted]
| ossusermivami wrote:
| I'll be uninstalling my fedora laptop if they do this!
| enz wrote:
| Why?
| jcrites wrote:
| Amazon Linux 2 could be a viable alternative. In addition to
| being available to run on AWS, it's also available as a
| container image and in various machine image formats:
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-2/#Resources
|
| AL has had enough work put into it over the years that, while
| it may have been inspired by CentOS/RHEL originally, calling
| it a rebadged CentOS is not accurate these days. A full and
| competent team maintains it. While it's clearly made similar
| architectural choices, those are also for compatibility
| reasons.
|
| However I doubt that support is available for anyone not
| running it on AWS, at least not from AWS -- but then again
| folks running CentOS weren't paying for support from RHEL
| either.
|
| I also wonder if the announcement is as bad as people make it
| sound. I'm not an expert in Linux distros, but my
| understanding is that AL2 also uses a streams-like model, in
| that it provides long term support (patches for existing
| software) while also making new software available. My
| understanding was that, while it is inevitably versioned by
| making artifacts like VMs and containers available over CDNs
| ( https://cdn.amazonlinux.com/os-images/2.0.20201111.0/ ),
| the expectation is that most users will always launch the
| latest version, relying on its backward compatibility.
| Perhaps someone who knows more about the specifics of its
| release model could comment.
| symlinkk wrote:
| I'd like to use Amazon Linux but it doesn't seem like they
| provide ISOs. Seems like it's intended to be used largely
| on EC2.
| notabee wrote:
| We had some folks try installing Amazon Linux images in
| our network. They spammed the network looking for a
| nonexistent link local metadata service, which is how we
| found out about them.
| mastre_ wrote:
| Don't forget that AL also runs on Amazon's A1 ARM
| instances.
| posix_me_less wrote:
| That would be cool "stick it to the man" trick, but how do we
| organize?
| rbowen wrote:
| Not only does this not "stick it to the man", it's directly
| addressed in the FAQ. If folks want to boot up another
| rebuild project, there's nothing preventing that. There are
| also several existing ones that you could go join.
| apecat wrote:
| Well, GoDaddy, or heh, AWS are The Man.
|
| My best hope is that the major hosting vendors, or maybe
| some industry consortium might offer resources for this.
| syshum wrote:
| AWS already has their on RHEL Clone, Amazon Linux, for
| use on AWS
| apecat wrote:
| @syshum, yes, but it's not exacly RHEL, and it's not
| distributed outside AWS
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25347232
|
| But the point is indeed that there are resources and
| infrastructure, so one might be hopeful that there will
| be a good outcome.
|
| One possible outcome would be increased demand and
| resources for Debian and/or Ubuntu and I definitely
| wouldn't mind that (five years of support isn't all that
| much in IT). Realistically though, a lot of people need
| RHEL for free and I suspect there will be a way.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| > @syshum, yes, but it's not exacly RHEL, and it's not
| distributed outside AWS
|
| On the first point you are correct. It's not exactly
| RHEL7.
|
| On the second point, Amazon provides images for running
| on prem[0]. We run a lot of dev AmazonLinux2 VMs on prem
| so that the local computing environment matches the
| deployed EC2 environment.
|
| 0: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/am
| azon-l...
| posix_me_less wrote:
| Yeah, resources and infrastrucure are not some magic that
| only Redhat can provide. If sources will be released on
| https://git.centos.org/ or somewhere else, then it may
| work. Just like the old times [1]
|
| [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/128952/
| voxadam wrote:
| FAQ: CentOS Stream Updates @ Red Hat[0]
|
| Q: What does this mean for users of CentOS Linux?
|
| The creation of CentOS Stream provides a new mechanism for
| partners and community members to add innovation to the next
| version of RHEL as it's being built instead of after it's
| built. We also recognize that there are different kinds of
| CentOS Linux users, and we are working with the CentOS
| Project Governing Board to tailor programs that meet the
| needs of different user groups.
|
| In the first half of 2021, we will be introducing low- or no-
| cost programs for a variety of use cases, including options
| for open source projects and communities, partner ecosystems
| and an expansion of the use cases of the Red Hat Enterprise
| Linux Developer subscription to better serve the needs of
| systems administrators and partner developers. We'll share
| more details on these initiatives as they become available.
| For those converting to RHEL, there is guidance available
| today for converting from CentOS Linux to RHEL.
|
| [0] https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-
| updates#Q10
| em500 wrote:
| LOL at the corporate guff. The primary use case of CentOS
| is "I want to run RHEL without paying anyone anything". The
| best way to "serve that need"? Don't kill off CentOS 8.3+.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Actually the best way is to allow free use of RHEL for
| those who don't want to pay for it.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I mean, that's de-facto what CentOS _was_ ; RHEL but non-
| paid and with different branding. But I mean... they were
| built from the (exact) same sources, so similar that you
| could convert between them by un/installing a few
| packages.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| The difference is that CentOS is really free. RHEL free
| will be whatever RedHat wants. Of course it won't be as
| free as CentOS. But if it'll be free enough to satisfy
| most CentOS users, that might be good enough.
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| That already exists and is called CloudLinux. It is very
| cheap but not free.
|
| Other RHEL-clones: Oracle Linux (best one), Springdale Linux.
|
| Other alternatives: openSUSE Leap and Debian. I am not even
| listing Ubuntu because I hate it since snaps.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| TIL Scientific Linux was discontinued in favor of CentOS :(
| znpy wrote:
| I guess it'll make a comeback.
| syshum wrote:
| CloudLinux is based on CentOS as an upstream it is unclear
| on how this announcement will impact CloudLinux
| apecat wrote:
| Oh cool. As for CloudLinux, "not free" probably scale for
| some hosting environments, including non-managed cloud
| instances.
|
| But something like Springdale, given resources, might be
| able to provide. They're still tracking RHEL 7, though.
|
| Debian and Ubuntu, which offer five years of Long Term
| Support are the next best thing available, and that's
| already kind of tight for long-term deployments of self-
| hosted, old-fashioned business software.
|
| Debian is particularly impressive, since they, on paper,
| aim to support all packages with security fixes, whereas
| Ubuntu's main repo is a lot more limited.
|
| OpenSUSE Leap versions seem to get three years, which
| really isn't enough software that needs to just work for a
| long while.
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| Springdale Linux is on RHEL 8.3 but their homepage is
| awfully out of date.
|
| Here's the full ISO for 8.1:
| http://puias.princeton.edu/data/puias/8.1/x86_64/iso/
|
| And then you can add the repos to update to 8.3:
| http://puias.princeton.edu/data/puias/8.3/
|
| Or you can take the small ("boot") ISO and install 8.3
| directy: http://puias.princeton.edu/data/puias/8.3/x86_64
| /os/images/
|
| In fact, they are even building Springdale Linux 8 for
| i386, which RHEL and CentOS never did.
|
| If you need more than three years on openSUSE Leap, then
| you need to upgrade to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
| bayindirh wrote:
| There's a silent but relatively big user base of CentOS in
| HPC and scientific computing.
|
| ScientificLinux and CentOS rules all HPC clusters. Clusters
| are like enterprise servers. Big, monolithic, rarely
| upgraded. They're upgraded in one big-fell swoop and left to
| run.
|
| There'll be another clone of RHEL since HPC can't accept
| CentOS Stream as the alternative. The whole infra is too big
| to move to Debian too.
|
| So with today's announcement, a new distro is born. Also Greg
| (CentOS' founder's) domain (HPCng) is very telling...
|
| We'll see. We're in for a hell of a ride. If you excuse me, I
| need to dust-off my XCAT servers...
| pnutjam wrote:
| We used SLES like that on our HPC. SLES and RH will run
| just fine without subscriptions if you don't plan to update
| them.
|
| The license for RH precludes you from running unlicensed
| RH, if you have any licensed RH. I don't believe SuSE does
| the same.
| chasil wrote:
| Oracle already has a clone that performs an in-place
| conversion of an installed CentOS 7 system.
|
| There is a page describing the conversion:
| https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos/
|
| They have a shell script to convert a CentOS install to
| Oracle Linux, so you can buy support if you want.
|
| The converter only works with versions 5, 6, and 7.
|
| It does not work with CentOS 8. It would be nice if that
| could get updated.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >0racle already has a clone that performs an in-place
| conversion of an installed CentOS 7 system.
|
| "Out of the frying pan into the fire"
| IntelMiner wrote:
| I don't think many people who want to use something
| stable like CentOS, but don't want to pay for a RHEL
| support contract would want to pay Oracle for RHEL-but-
| with-Oracle-sprinkles-on-top
| kbenson wrote:
| Not to mention Oracle is not known to leave money on the
| table, and if they see they can start charging for Oracle
| Linux because there's no large well known free version, I
| wouldn't put it past them.
|
| Put another way, if you jump ship from CentOS because IBM
| caused Red Hat to change it into a funnel to pay them
| money, if you landed on Oracle, you might be setting
| yourself up to do it all over again fairly soon.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Oracle Linux is free with optional paid support.
|
| "Unlike many other commercial Linux distributions, Oracle
| Linux is easy to download and completely free to use,
| distribute, and update. Oracle Linux is available under
| the GNU General Public License (GPLv2). Support contracts
| are available from Oracle. "
|
| https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/027617.pdf [PDF]
| davoneus wrote:
| never, Ever, EVER trust Oracle. Especially with something
| as important as an open source product. Evidence:
| Oracle's Sen. VP Glueck statement that "There is no math
| that can justify open source from a cost perspective." No
| chance you'll ever see me running OEL.
| apecat wrote:
| Are there any license traps in Oracle Linux?
|
| Writing like this makes me very wary of putting Oracle
| Linux anywhere near my employer's systems
|
| https://www.computerworld.com/article/2992597/law-firm-
| warns...
|
| https://blog.dbwatch.com/how-to-avoid-oracles-licensing-
| trap...
|
| Then there's the famous lawn mover quote from Bryan
| Cantrill https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Can you imagine if they had successfully purchased
| TikTok?
| apecat wrote:
| match made not in heaven but on Oracle Cloud
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > never, Ever, EVER trust Oracle.
|
| Been burned by them before. Not at liberty to give
| details, but the outcome is that I never choose Oracle
| for anything for the rest of my career. Even if it would
| save time and money.
| bayindirh wrote:
| In our setup we don't need any add-ons that Oracle brings
| to the table. We also don't need their greed too.
|
| We only need RH equal of Debian, since the software we
| use generally have explicit CentOS/RHEL support.
| pinewurst wrote:
| Where's the evidence that this is IBM driven?
| jms55 wrote:
| Somewhat off topic: Are there any kind of stateless, managed-for-
| me server images?
|
| I recently set up a digital ocean droplet with the default Ubuntu
| 20.04 Server image to host my web app. I don't like how I'm in
| charge of installing security updates and rebooting it (I don't
| really care about downtime), and I really don't like how I don't
| really remember what packages and commands I ran to install
| everything.
|
| Presumably, this is what digital ocean app platform is for, where
| I could just provide a docker container. But the specs of the 5$
| app platform container were half as good as the 5$ droplet, and I
| can run multiple things on the droplet in the future.
| FeistySkink wrote:
| Oh, wow. My whole extended family has CentOS on their machines
| for years because of LTS. Not sure what I'm going to replace it
| with now and how. Perhaps there's going to be Fedora LTS at some
| point soon. I sure hope Fedora is not the next casualty.
|
| IBM strikes again.
| mattdm wrote:
| I'm a little confused by this. Well, first, I'd encourage you
| to try Fedora Workstation for your family -- we've worked on
| making upgrades painless, so that they're basically an
| automated thing that happens while you go for coffee once or
| twice a year (at your option). But second, if a "Fedora LTS"
| would fit your needs, why not give CentOS Stream a look? It's
| not actually going to be that different from CentOS Linux, and
| almost certainly will have less constant change than a
| theoretical Fedora LTS would.
|
| Also, I am not one of the highest upptity-ups in the company or
| anything, but from the inside: I see no evidence whatsoever
| that this is the result of IBM anything.
| posix_me_less wrote:
| Redhat just reneged on its commitments regarding CentOS 8.
| When has this happened before?
| FeistySkink wrote:
| Thank you for the reply. While I personally never had a
| single issue with upgrading between Fedora releases, I also
| have the skills the resolve any potential ones if I would. I
| don't want to deal with somebody's computer suddenly being
| borked halfway across the world with no way to assist. So far
| CentOS fit that niche beautifully, with seldom major clean
| reinstalls (i.e. wipe root) when I'm there (7.x > 8.x). I'm
| going to evaluate CentOS Stream and perhaps you are right and
| it's a viable replacement.
| danieldk wrote:
| _I don 't want to deal with somebody's computer suddenly
| being borked halfway across the world with no way to
| assist._
|
| Fedora Silverblue could be interesting alternative to
| regular Fedora then, since you can boot into or roll back
| to a previous release. You can also pin a known-good OSTree
| commit, so that one could always boot that version.
| Iolaum wrote:
| This. Although I 'd suggest running Silverblue in a VM
| first to learn about package layering and flatpaks. (This
| was my migration path. Made sure all my use cases were
| working within the VM before I installed on bare metal.)
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| (Disclaimer: I am capable of fixing upgrade issues myself.)
| I've not done a wipe-root reinstall of Fedora since 2013.
| I've in place upgraded every two versions or so - basically
| as soon as the version I'm using goes EOL.
| cesarb wrote:
| > we've worked on making upgrades painless, so that they're
| basically an automated thing that happens while you go for
| coffee once or twice a year (at your option)
|
| In my experience (just went through that, F32 -> F33), it's
| painless but definitely not "an automated thing that happens
| while you go for coffee"; each machine took a whole day, it's
| a huge download (many gigabytes) and the install itself seems
| to be severely fsync-limited (several hours while the
| progress bar slowly fills and the disk light is lit all the
| time; after the fact, "journalctl -b -1" shows it was
| installing/cleaning package by package all that time).
| m4rtink wrote:
| Fedora Silverblue can be an option then - the roots is an
| immutable snapshots tracked by OSTree It can build an
| updated OSTree snapshot in the background & only the
| difference from what you have are downloaded. Then you
| reboot into that new snapshot, while still having the old
| one (and ony other you care to keep) available, in case
| something is not right with the new one.
|
| That should address most of the issues you mention. :)
| eropple wrote:
| Silverblue, in my experience, is not really there. I like
| the idea. As of my latest try at it in August, I wouldn't
| recommend anybody recommend it unless they're going to be
| physically standing in front of the machine on a regular
| basis.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Your whole family runs CentOS as their desktop operating
| system?
| FeistySkink wrote:
| Extended yes. And has been for years without a single issue.
| Immediate family all on Fedora. Very little maintenance,
| automated updates. Desktop software installed through
| flatpaks. Easy remote management. Users don't care about the
| OS as long as they know how to open the browser, email, word
| processor, Skype, Zoom, etc.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Fair enough, was just confirming. It didn't occur to me
| that flatpaks would probably assist in bridging the gap
| between a "Workstation" OS and a conventional end-user OS
| where yum repos and EPEL might be lacking.
|
| > Easy remote management.
|
| Just out of curiousity, are you SSHing in directly, or
| installing the Teamviewer RPM on all of them?
| FeistySkink wrote:
| Each house has an single always-on VPN client (RPi) to
| the central server so I ssh in case something is up.
| Pretty much never happens, but it's good to know the
| option is there. Most issues are with a specific software
| and not the OS, so I need to have a visual to help
| resolve, e.g. "Where is my contact list in Viber?" or
| "Why do I see this page?".
|
| Plus, I'm running Pi-Hole in docker and I ssh to upgrade
| it from time to time, (docker pull, docker-compose
| down/up, etc.). I haven't bothered automating this
| because some things change between releases and I still
| end up doing manual configuration changes.
| ossusermivami wrote:
| I'd love to have the original Centos project people doing an AMA
| and what they (really) think about this decision!
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Wow, saw it coming at the IBM aquisition but this caught me off
| guard. I've run them all in production, so getting to brass tacks
| I say this will push people into either SLE or Ubuntu's arms for
| the fact that these are the two main alternatives that offer both
| a support model and have high deployment numbers and great teams
| behind them. I prefer SLE but to each their own. The fact that I
| have advocated for rolling release as the distro model of the
| future doesnt negate the many cases where tracking with RHEL for
| stability is required.
|
| That said, I think a lot of issues I've seen would be helped by
| people not being so afraid of rolling release , so maybe
| reconsider the fundamentals before being too chicken little.
| Also, I suspect this could be the kick we all need to start
| pushing nix and guix more seriously.
|
| I like stream. A handful of my side projects are running it now,
| but IBM done fucked up with this move.
|
| ps: please, dont go trusting oracle
| unethical_ban wrote:
| There is no reason for them to have taken the CentOS name for
| this role. There is no defense of this, other than to purloin
| resources or to make it harder to run RHEL-like distros.
| jsiepkes wrote:
| Having a more "front runner" distro for RHEL (RedHat Enterprise)
| is great for RedHat. Since bugs will probably be caught in CentOS
| and don't end up in RHEL. This front runner role was actually
| intended for Fedora however Fedora contains way too much
| experimental changes for anyone to seriously try to run it on
| servers.
|
| I don't want to sound too "tin-foil headed" but I guess now that
| RedHat has hired the main CentOS dev(s?) this change comes from
| RedHat. I can't imagine the CentOS user base wants this direction
| for the CentOS project (or maybe thats just my lack of
| imagination...). People who use CentOS want a boring Linux distro
| like RHEL. They just don't want to pay for RHEL subscriptions.
| ilovetux wrote:
| > People who use CentOS want a boring Linux distro like RHEL.
| They just don't want to pay for RHEL subscriptions.
|
| I use CentOS a lot for prototyping projects destined to be put
| on RHEL servers. I like it as a try-before-you-buy version of
| RHEL, and this change makes that use case a lot less useful.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I think that your use-case matches perfectly with RHEL free
| developer license.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > Having a more "front runner" distro for RHEL (RedHat
| Enterprise) is great for RedHat. Since bugs will probably be
| caught in CentOS and don't end up in RHEL.
|
| I thought that Fedora was already serving this role
| dralley wrote:
| Not really. RHEL / CentOS is basically a hardened snapshot of
| Fedora taken every few years, with a few bespoke changes on
| top. So in that sense you could argue that Fedora is a front-
| runner for "the next RHEL" but at any point in time it is too
| far ahead of the current RHEL to be a useful testbed in any
| respect for those users. Although I guess you could argue
| that it helps knock down bugs in packages like GNOME that do
| get updated regularly in RHEL.
|
| CentOS Stream is basically "the next x.y release of RHEL".
| Some updates, like GNOME updates and new hardware enablement,
| will be present in CentOS Stream a few months before they are
| released to RHEL and CentOS as part of a new x.y-release.
| mattdm wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly it. The conspiracy theories about
| buying-CentOS-to-kill it are understandable but totally
| off-base. Red Hat brought CentOS in-house at a time when
| the company was trying to grow from being a single-product
| company to a portfolio one, and it became clear that Fedora
| wasn't working for what at the time RH called "layered
| products". The hope was that CentOS would provide a more-
| RHEL-like community place for work like RDO to happen. That
| was partially successful, but the plan wasn't really
| realized -- and speaking from a Fedora point of view, that
| "Fedora is failing at a thing we need so we'll turn to
| CentOS" wasn't a healthy dynamic for either project. CentOS
| Stream serves the initial purpose better, and now RH's
| distro ecosystem story is actually linear rather than a
| crazy MC Escher contortion.
| Twirrim wrote:
| RHEL bought CentOS 6 years ago.
|
| Note that the announcement blog post points folks to using
| RedHat instead.
|
| Embrace, Extend, Extinguish succeeded?
| fogihujy wrote:
| > People who use CentOS want a boring Linux distro like RHEL.
| They just don't want to pay for RHEL subscriptions.
|
| There's a lot of people using CentOS indirectly, through
| CloudLinux. Whatever happens there, a lot of people will be
| affected.
| Galanwe wrote:
| And Scientific Linux, and Amazon Linux, etc.
| em500 wrote:
| SL never released version 8 (they switched to CentOS8).
| Amazon (correct me if I'm wrong) does not release installer
| ISOs. AFAIK, closest to a plain free RHEL8 clone is Oracle
| Linux.
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| There's also Springdale Linux.
| kasabali wrote:
| Wow I forgot it existed. I must've erased it from my mind
| along with Scientific Linux. Nice to see they've kept it
| up-to-date so far.
| em500 wrote:
| If they just want a free (beer) RHEL clone, the best choice
| might turn out to be ... Oracle Linux. Who would have thought?
| m3adow wrote:
| Isn't Amazon Linux basically the same? Or is that a fork of
| CentOS in the first place?
| em500 wrote:
| Can I download and run Amazon Linux at home (non-vm)?
| [deleted]
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| Not really. You can use Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 like that
| if you want but why would you do that? Oracle Linux,
| CloudLinux, Debian or openSUSE Leap are better choices.
| Twirrim wrote:
| CentOS is how RedHat releases their sources in compliance
| with open source licenses (Presumably they're going back to
| releasing them as a consequence for this).
|
| My familiarity with Amazon Linux is about 4 years out-of-
| date these days, but it was a RHEL/CentOS clone with a
| number of the core libraries like glibc being updated and
| maintained by Amazon on an independent life cycle.
| acqq wrote:
| > might turn out to be ... Oracle Linux
|
| Is CentOS the upstream for Oracle Linux? Instead of which
| comes CentOS Stream and then the question is what will Oracle
| do? Would they even try to keep the old CentOS concept alive?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that OEL is derived directly from RHEL,
| particularly because OEL 8 shipped while CentOS was still
| figuring out how to deal with streams.
|
| EDIT: This may be inaccurate; see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25348496
| syshum wrote:
| >>Since bugs will probably be caught in CentOS
|
| That is only true if CentOS continues to be widely adopted,
| with this move by RedHat i do not see that continuing, I am
| sure many org's right now are looking for options to move off
| CentOS / RHEL stacks.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| > People who use CentOS want a boring Linux distro like RHEL.
| They just don't want to pay for RHEL subscriptions.
|
| How dare they want a free operating system?
| omniglottal wrote:
| How dare tens of thousands of developers produce a free
| operating system, and it gets sold by one business who added
| graphics of a trademarked hat?
| jamespo wrote:
| Sounds straightforward to maintain your own fork in that
| case.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| You do realize that a non-trivial number of contributions
| to Linux come from professional developers working at
| companies like Google, IBM, and RH?
| 1_player wrote:
| Agreed, a significant part of Linux's graphical stack
| (GNOME, mesa, pipewire, etc.) is maintained by people
| whose email end in @redhat.com
| kcb wrote:
| For now. As with all acquisitions it's only a matter of
| when.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| When RH bought CentOS, it was clear they would kill it
| eventually, the question was when. Well, it looks like it's
| happening just now. Time for a CentOS replacement.
| balozi wrote:
| _> If you are using CentOS Linux 8 in a production environment,
| and are concerned that CentOS Stream will not meet your needs, we
| encourage you to contact Red Hat about options._ I 'm guessing
| the MBAs at IBM believe that they can covert a chunk of CentOS
| enterprise users into paying IBM customers. Ooof! CentOS had a
| good run.
| znpy wrote:
| Oh, FUCK.
|
| I liked them because I could have a rock solid environment at
| work and play with technologies with centos at home.
|
| Fuck all that I guess. If this is the game then I'm not renewing
| my RHCSA certification and I'll be considering definitively
| switching to Ubuntu.
| messe wrote:
| > CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end at the end of
| 2021
|
| Does this mean that CentOS 8 is EOL come 2021? Weren't
| maintenance updates meant to go to 2029? What about everybody who
| built their product on the assumption that there would be a
| stable CentOS until then?
| kcb wrote:
| Yes. https://wiki.centos.org/About/Product
|
| It used to be this.
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201101131417/https://wiki.cent...
| folkrav wrote:
| Wow. Violently disingenuous.
| sjs382 wrote:
| Yup. Edited today. Why even publish the EOL dates, at this
| point? They're meaningless.
|
| That page is a Wiki and here is the diff between the current
| version and the previous: https://wiki.centos.org/action/info
| /About/Product?action=dif...
| moray wrote:
| Wow.. I literally just migrated my main production mail
| server to centos8 hoping to let it run for another 10
| years... I guess it is time to study alternatives..
| em500 wrote:
| > Does this mean that CentOS 8 is EOL come 2021?
|
| They've just eradicated almost all mentions of CentOS 8 from
| their main website. So: yes.
|
| > What about everybody who built their product on the
| assumption that there would be a stable CentOS until then?
|
| They just got what they paid for?
| messe wrote:
| > They just got what they paid for?
|
| Haha, fair. To be honest, I'm surprised it took this long for
| it to happen after CentOS joined Red Hat. I wonder if the IBM
| acquisition had any influence on this.
| centimeter wrote:
| > They just got what they paid for?
|
| Funny, but isn't this totally reasonable grounds for an
| adverse possession claim against RHEL?
|
| If a business claims they're going to keep doing something,
| and you build your business on that claim, and then they
| change their mind, you can have grounds to sue. Or, at least,
| that's what I vaguely remember from reading about AP law.
| yayr wrote:
| is there any license or other issue (apart from resources)
| restricting someone to just take on the Centos n downstream
| development in addition to redhat building stream?
| whatsmyusername wrote:
| This is why I immediately switched our long term plans to Ubuntu
| after the IBM acquisition was announced.
| linuxftw wrote:
| So, I suppose CentOS is dead. As others have stated, another
| group will have to step up and create another CentOS, or just
| switch to Debian Testing.
| kijin wrote:
| Official CentOS/RHEL is more like Debian Stable.
|
| The new CentOS "Stream" sounds like it will be more like Debian
| Testing.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| As stated in https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-
| building-innova... (linked from the article):
|
| "CentOS Stream now sits between the Fedora Project's
| operating system innovation and RHEL's production stability"
|
| So if we compare to Debian, this means:
|
| Fedora <=> Debian unstable (Sid)
|
| CentOS Stream <=> Debian testing (currently Bullseye)
|
| RHEL <=> Debian stable (currently Buster)
| linuxftw wrote:
| Debian Stable might be more analogous to CentOS, but they
| don't do major feature backports like RHEL does, so I find
| stable is often much too old by the time it's actually
| released.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Take a look in buster-updates (or any X-updates for older
| ones).
|
| I guess there are only so many ways to organize a distro.
| pmlnr wrote:
| There's always a backports repository for the stable
| release in Debian: deb
| http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib
| non-free deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian
| buster-backports main contrib non-free
| kijin wrote:
| On the other hand, CentOS systems tend to last much longer
| due to the 10-year support cycle. So I often encounter wild
| specimens that are even older than Debian oldstable.
|
| Right now, I've got a bunch of CentOS 6 servers with 2.6.32
| kernels that are freshly out of support this month. I was
| hoping to replace them with 8, but now I'll probably have
| to settle for 7. At least I can take consolation in the
| fact that I haven't been called in to troubleshoot any
| CentOS 5 servers lately.
| TavsiE9s wrote:
| From their FAQ [0]: Q4: How will CVEs be
| handled in CentOS Stream? A: Security issues will be
| updated in CentOS Stream after they are solved in the current
| RHEL release.
|
| So a "front runner" for bugs but not security issues.
|
| [0]: https://centos.org/distro-faq/
| Twirrim wrote:
| It's essentially no different from how things currently are.
| RedHat releases updates, CentOS group picks those up and builds
| CentOS packages from them. They usually lag a day or two.
|
| They really lagged on the PLATYPUS CPU vulnerability for CentOS
| 7, because they were dealing with a backlog from the 7.9 bump.
| Took them several days to get the patches out.
| cozzyd wrote:
| I guess the question will be how fast CentOS Stream releases
| fixes compared to Debian Stable/Testing and Ubuntu LTS.
| symlinkk wrote:
| It will almost certainly be slower than Ubuntu just because
| of the extra layer of work mentioned above.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Canonical are also fairly actively involved in security
| fixes and among those brought in to the various security
| embargoes. They usually ship packages the same day
| embargoes drop.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Interesting, who else are involved in the embargoes?
| Anywhere I could read more about this?
| sk5t wrote:
| How is "everything a little after" the same as "some things
| prior, other things after"?
| bonzini wrote:
| Patches for those security issues are embargoed until
| specified dates. Red Hat simply cannot add them to CentOS
| stream before that date.
| syshum wrote:
| Which was expected since CentOS was a free (beer)rebuild of
| RHEL
|
| CentOS Stream however is not a Free (beer) rebuild of RHEL
| anymore, it is an "upstream" for RHEL, so it would not be
| expected that this flow would work like described for an
| upstream product
| pmlnr wrote:
| Not true, because the current CO is not a rolling update.
|
| RHEL security fixes for version X.Y may or may not fix
| security issues for version Z.A on CO, if the are not in
| sync.
| Twirrim wrote:
| > Not true, because the current CO is not a rolling update.
|
| I'm not sure where I claimed it was?
| mixedCase wrote:
| Hahahaha. That's a lesson learnt from me. Giving the benefit of
| the doubt to IBM? What a naive fool I was. I'm glad my personal
| server is running Debian at least, even if I chose it for other
| reasons.
|
| At risk of angering the beehive, I will pre-emptively remove my
| benefit of the doubt to Microsoft as well before I become too
| dependent on VS Code and its proprietary extensions. I had been
| ignoring that red flag and with these news my gut instinct has
| turned to a fight or flight response.
| Keverw wrote:
| Wow. Disappointing! Wonder if we should trust other Red Hat
| projects? Like I think podman is cool if I were building my own
| PaaS type system.
| bubblethink wrote:
| This is quite logical and expected from RH's standpoint. The
| aberration was them acquiring CentOS in the first place. In the
| long run, I expect everyone to migrate to Ubuntu or Debain
| slowly. This has been happening anyway. I don't think people will
| trust a new CentOS-like project easily should one pop up.
|
| Thanks, for all the fish, CentOS. The city of Tuttle, Oklahoma is
| grateful.
| liv-io wrote:
| Seems like some folks are considering to create an alternative:
|
| https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/#com...
|
| https://join.slack.com/t/hpcng/shared_invite/zt-gy0st6mt-ijg...
| Veen wrote:
| > If you are using CentOS Linux 8 in a production environment,
| and are concerned that CentOS Stream will not meet your needs, we
| encourage you to contact Red Hat about options.
|
| Not exactly unexpected, but disappointing: if you want to
| continue using something like CentOS, pay for RHEL. Lots of web
| hosting providers will be quite concerned.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Why exactly is that disappointing? Isn't it more disappointing
| that some companies expect to be able to run the same OS for 13
| years and get security patches backported for free?
|
| I don't think this will hurt RedHat at all. How many RHEL
| customers are actually generated as a result of providing
| CentOS for free? Not many I suspect.
|
| Those who want to learn about RHEL can still get Fedora, or
| CentOS Stream, or a RedHat developer license.
| ueshiba9 wrote:
| Agree, "customers" who use CentOS are not paying for Linux
| and won't pay for any other distro. Somebody has to work to
| provide a stable distro and supported on many hardwares,
| hypervisors/clouds and softwares running on top of OS. But
| the funny things is that usually there is a huge
| contradiction on people who uses CentOS on production, they
| are the same people who pays for proprietary software like
| Windows, Office, Oracle DB, VMware, etc... sometimes spend
| millions of dollars on these softwares, but save some bucks
| using a free Linux distro!! But I do respect the ones who are
| entirely open source, just don't think any big company
| besides Google for example, would have a huge IT teams to
| support everything
| adamc wrote:
| It will hurt indirectly, because a lot of
| developers/devops/sys admins get skills working on CentOS
| which are then portable to RHEL. Now they won't. Network
| effects of being popular are significant.
| kcb wrote:
| I disagree I think RHEL and CentOS go/went hand in hand. With
| RHEL being used and licensed depending on the project or the
| environment. Binary compatibility and the uniformity of
| managing both being the big selling point.
|
| Now the closest alternative is Canonical with Ubuntu Server
| which can be installed wherever with no strings and support
| purchased as required.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Yeah but how long before Canonical pull the same move as
| RedHat? The way i see it, Canonical is trying to build a
| moat (lastly with Snap).
|
| I think I'm going back to Debian for my servers. i wish
| they add 10 years lts though.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Debian is exactly like CentOS - community driven. The
| exact same thing could happen there.
|
| If you want guaranteed updates backed by a contract,
| choose Ubuntu or RHEL.
| posix_me_less wrote:
| Because CentOS was once an independent project and Redhat
| promissed to keep Centos 8 alive till 2029.
|
| Security patches are not backports, they are security patches
| that obviously should be for free, Redhat is making loads of
| money off free software already.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Something like RHEL 6 is running on a 2.6 Linux kernel, all
| security patches has to be backported. That is an EOL
| kernel. Almost all versions of the software bundled with
| RHEL 6 have been EOL from upstream providers during it's
| ten year lifetime. Of cause you're free to try to attempt
| to applied any patches yourself, you don't have to pay.
|
| If RedHat promised to keep CentOS 8 around for 9 more
| years, then yes, that is very disappointing. It was a
| stupid promise to make in the first place, but still
| disappointing.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I mean, yes? Backporting fixes and security patches is
| the entire point of RHEL/CentOS/OEL. And indeed it's
| upsetting precisely because CentOS was supposed to be
| supported into 2029 - https://web.archive.org/web/2020110
| 1131417/https://wiki.cent...
| cozzyd wrote:
| It's a network effect. If you are always around EL machines,
| you're going to know, want to work with, and recommend EL
| machines.
| carwyn wrote:
| Like many my first reaction was shock, but at the same time not
| surprised. Have even emailed the address provided with feedback
| as I work for a University which like many use a mix of RHEL and
| CentOS.
|
| As per the FAQ though I suspect there is more to this than meets
| the eye. Two things strike me: 1. The suggestion that low or no
| cost options for RHEL are coming for certain categories of user.
| 2. As much as Stream will be a rolling and "beta" channel,
| Fedora/CentOS/RHEL already have testing repos within their
| release process so Stream may not be as unstable as this might
| first suggest.
|
| With local staged repository mirrors Steam may end up being less
| volatile than the existing point releases which were notorious
| for breaking things at times.
| nrclark wrote:
| What will this mean for Fedora? Doesn't Fedora already occupy the
| niche of "Redhat-unstable"?
| endperform wrote:
| According to the FAQ, specifically question 15:
| https://centos.org/distro-faq/
|
| > CentOS Stream is focused on the next RHEL minor release. This
| means we are improving and influencing the shipping releases of
| RHEL. Fedora ELN is a testing area for changes that may occur
| in the next major release of RHEL.The CentOS Project cannot and
| does not speak for Fedora
| mattdm wrote:
| Fedora doesn't like to be put in that particular niche anyway.
| Yes, Fedora is fast moving and it is what Red Hat uses as the
| base for major releases, but we're more than "Redhat-unstable"
| in so many ways.
|
| CentOS Stream will be the upstream for RHEL minor branch
| development. This is actually a huge thing that I think people
| are missing: previously, once branched from Fedora, RHEL
| development did not happen in the public eye. With Stream, it
| will. This is huge and awesome good news. However, that
| development will still be entirely Red Hat curated. This is
| different from Fedora, where we make community decisions with
| Red Hat's engineering input as a stakeholder but not the
| decider. (See for example btrfs as the default filesystem.)
| macspoofing wrote:
| >This is huge and awesome good news.
|
| So why the negativity at this "huge and awesome good news"?
| em500 wrote:
| It might be "huge and awesome good news" if they keep both
| CentOS 8.x and CentOS Stream. But they're forcing Stream as a
| replacement, hence all the pushback. Let's be honest, most
| people just want to run a gratis released RHEL, not run their
| betas.
|
| My guess is that Stream turned out way less popular than
| their sponsored hoped (who cares if it's developed in the
| public eye if it's entirely RH curated anyway). So CentOS 8.x
| had to die.
| xernus wrote:
| To be honest, I think this is bs. The CentOS community is huge
| and RH benefits a lot from the discoveries made by the community.
|
| However, doing this will effectively make CentOS as a server OS
| useless for the most of us. "But Facebook uses it" - well, yes,
| with thousands of engineers Facebook could run their own distro
| and still have success if they wanted. Most useless argument
| ever.
|
| Time to move on and find something else. Maybe good old Debian.
| curt15 wrote:
| "But Facebook uses it"
|
| Since Facebook actually uses kernels from Fedora Rawhide
| (necessary for btrfs support I guess), their systems are
| nowhere near the CentOS you and I would use.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Facebook have their own kernel developers. It was a selling
| point one of their teams used to try to lure me there.
| enz wrote:
| It must be a classic selling point... a French company
| (pretty big) told me the same thing to lure me (even if my
| hypothetical job was not directly related to that fact)
| abalashov wrote:
| When I got started in business in the late 2000s, I was
| constantly fighting for Debian vs. CentOS, and eventually was
| forced to concede -- 95% of my customers wanted to run CentOS,
| all the more so given the exceptional conservatism of the telecom
| industry. They were attracted to its promise of long-term support
| and longevity, and, perhaps more vitally, it's what all the other
| organisations who sought an "enterprise-friendly" distribution
| were running.
|
| Over time, much of my tooling and deployment processes has come
| to presume CentOS. If the customer base overwhelmingly runs
| CentOS, you build process for CentOS.
|
| Thankfully, though, Systemd--for all its faults--has narrowed the
| painful deltas between Linux distributions enough that a switch
| back to a Debian target won't be too painful.
|
| Where's your God now, "CentOS is something we can depend on, it's
| not just a rag-tag band of open-source hippies"?
| tutunak wrote:
| The end of the era of the most stable Linux distributive for
| servers. Why it happened. I love Centos so much, but for now I
| have to decide which distributive I'll use in my production and I
| don't want to use neither Oracle or Debian like. IBM made my life
| harder.
| happyjack wrote:
| Wow. I kind of new this day was coming. I work in engineering /
| science (not comp. sci or developing) and all our software
| vendors are Windows or RHEL support only. Although if you know
| your way around linux any flavor will do, but RHEL is the
| "standard" for support. It's kind of like "insurance." We expect
| this to compile / work for RHEL and NOTHING else, because RHEL is
| stable, predictable, and boring.
|
| I've run most all the flavors of linux and am on the Ubuntu
| train. Actually, I flirted with the RHEL / Fedora / CentOS
| workflows as current as last year for a few months. I love the
| predictability and stability of RHEL on workstations and the
| thought of something new on a laptop or what not. While I respect
| the hell out of RH and their products, it just didn't work for
| me. Fedora is WAY too experimental, lacks supports, and is prone
| to your system breaking. I know, I know, it is pretty stable and
| has a lot of support behind it. But after updating via yum and
| having my WIFI stop working on my 6 year old Thinkpad, that is a
| deal breaker. I think there is way too much disconnect between
| their projects. RHEL is super stable, but the packages are
| severely outdated. Fedora is too experimental, and is pretty much
| a home operating system and a playground. I know CentOS is free,
| but depending on your business is paying $300 / year / machine
| for legitimate support and ticketing really an issue? That's for
| everyone to decide on their own. I think Ubuntu LTS is the best
| middle ground for stability and new packages. And if you need
| paid support and professional help, you can pay Canonical as
| well.
|
| I could see this coming. CentOS didn't really show a value
| proposition for RH picking up the tab and supporting it. CentOS
| was recompiling RHEL and shipping it off; RH needs to keep their
| PR and image inline and HAD to help, since the whole point of
| CentOS was "this is RHEL without RH graphics and copyrighted
| material." IMO, RH felt like they were doing the same thing
| twice; producing RHEL, then removing RHEL branding and helping
| package up and compiling CentOS. Due to this, I think the biz
| folks scratched their on why they needed money, and now we have
| Centos Stream. I have no doubt another project will spin up
| taking up the slack of just recompiling RHEL.
|
| Different tools for different jobs. Maybe Centos Stream will be
| awesome! Maybe it can fill the gap between Fedora and RHEL.
| adamc wrote:
| I see it as gradually hurting them, as organizations switch to
| other server Linux versions, and that diminishes the value of
| RHEL knowledge.
| happyjack wrote:
| I totally agree with this. More fragmentation, less
| documentation / solidarity.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| > I could see this coming. CentOS didn't really show a value
| proposition for RH picking up the tab and supporting it. CentOS
| was recompiling RHEL and shipping it off; RH needs to keep
| their PR and image inline and HAD to help, since the whole
| point of CentOS was "this is RHEL without RH graphics and
| copyrighted material."
|
| Bear in mind that CentOS was originally an independent project
| until Red Hat acquired it.
| happyjack wrote:
| You are correct! I think my point is that when your
| independent project grows so large that is has effect on the
| other, the main operator (RH) has to acknowledge it and do
| something about ti.
| dilawar wrote:
| I have been using openSUSE. It's been pretty stable on the
| laptop. On laptop, I use the Tumbleweed (rolling release) and
| 15.1 or 15.2 on servers. Give it a try.
| FeistySkink wrote:
| What's the package management like? Does it support flatpaks?
| And what about LTS?
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| Packages are RPMS, managed with zypper. You may also use
| dnf but you will miss some of the advanced features
| provided by dnf (e. g. the concept of patches vs updates),
| there was a zypper vs dnf thread recently in the openSUSE
| mailing lists.
|
| It does support flatpaks.
|
| There is no free openSUSE LTS. The LTS is called SUSE Linux
| Enterprise Server, costs some money (unless you are a
| developer, in that case you get free subscriptions) and the
| LTS lasts for a minimum of 13 years.
| happyjack wrote:
| I have always wanted to try SUSE!
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| Ooops, I meant "you will miss some of the advanced
| features provided by zypper". It's dnf what's lacking the
| concept of patch, and many more.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Zypper is awesome. The newest version of LEAP is identical
| to Suse Enterprise, you can convert with a simple script if
| you decide you want extended support.
|
| The root filesystem uses btrfs, so it's easy to roll back
| update problems. There is also a newer version that uses a
| read-only root filesystem and updates are applied to a new
| snapshot that takes over when you reboot. It's pretty cool.
| bluedino wrote:
| If you're going to use Tumbleweed you might as well use
| CentOS stream, no?
| merb wrote:
| I'm also a big fan of opensuse lately especially their
| tumbleweed microos. it's such a breeze to use transactional-
| update (automatically) and reboot a fleet with some looking
| mechanism (even with k8s kured).
|
| suse cured my containerlinux wound. (if suse gets bought by
| ibm than I will be furious or if they kill microos)
| CrLf wrote:
| TL;DR: CentOS Linux 8.x will end in 2021, CentOS Stream 8 will be
| RHEL 8.x plus whatever updates are in the pipeline for it. CentOS
| 7.x will remain as today until RHEL 7.x reaches EOL.
|
| I'm very pessimistic on what this means for the RHEL ecosystem as
| a whole...
|
| If I understand correctly, CentOS Stream 8 should be relatively
| stable just after a RHEL 8.x release, because the pipeline will
| contain just minor updates. But as the next "x+1" release
| approaches, the pipeline will contain whatever is being tested
| for inclusion in it. This makes CentOS Stream unsuitable for the
| vast majority of people that currently use CentOS in production
| (i.e. the people that choose CentOS over something else like
| Debian Stable or Ubuntu LTS).
|
| One can argue that these people can go buy RHEL licenses, but
| they most likely don't do that already because they see support
| as the value added by RHEL-proper and they can support themselves
| just fine. Many will also have RHEL instances along CentOS on
| systems that need vendor support, but pushing them to license
| everything may also push them into another direction altogether.
| Suddenly, standardizing on Ubuntu LTS (with paid support for a
| subset of instances) starts to make sense.
|
| I think Red Hat (or maybe IBM) is vastly underestimating the
| value of CentOS in keeping the whole RHEL ecosystem competitive.
| They may be setting themselves up to be another SUSE.
| kcb wrote:
| Yea. I think this is an extremely short-sighted move. Many RHEL
| customers utilize CentOS. I know CentOS is a community but it
| is led by Red Hat developers. Suddenly pulling 8 years of
| support from their community project is not going to be looked
| at favorably by any IT team.
| em500 wrote:
| I share your pessimism about RHEL. I think Canonical could be a
| big beneficiary, if they can stop shooting themselves in the
| foot with stuff like upsells for live kernel patches, and snaps
| for non-desktop apps.
| busterarm wrote:
| They've basically ceded the entire ecosystem to Canonical
| with this move and haven't realized it yet.
|
| And we're all worse off for it.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| What about Debian? SUSE?
| busterarm wrote:
| If all of your vendors are targeting Debian and/or SUSE
| for their software, consider yourself blessed.
| neilwilson wrote:
| CentOS is to be essentially the beta release for the next minor
| release of RHEL whereas Fedora ELN is targeting the next major
| release.
|
| Makes sense commercially from RH's point of view. Boring and
| stable is now chargeable.
| ryanmjacobs wrote:
| Well this sucks... IBM/RedHat is really shooting themselves in
| the foot here. Stable CentOS versions have always been my go-to
| for VPS services. Install it once and you're good -- plus no
| Ubuntu snap stuff... I have 5+ CentOS 8 installs and I was really
| banking on the LTS timeline. I wish they would have kept that
| going alongside their CentOS 7 support.
|
| I'm debating whether or not to downgrade to CentOS 7 to at least
| keep going until 2024, instead of 2021 with CentOS 8.
|
| Hopefully, some other player steps up and creates a similar
| offering.
|
| Also, I've been irked lately about them deprecating virt-manager
| and pushing podman. I don't mind alternatives, just keep the
| feature parity when you switch. Cockpit is fairly limited
| compared to virt-manager.
| teilo wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I read this, CentOS Stream
| will still serve as a stable clone of RHEL just as it always has.
| The rolling distro will be tagged at a certain point in time for
| a RHEL release, and you can still choose to use that state as
| your production base, and be locked at that tag. Presumably there
| will be a CentOS Stream 9 tag that you can use for production.
| The difference will be that CentOS will lead rather than follow
| the RHEL release.
|
| I think the doom and gloom is a misunderstanding.
| lutorm wrote:
| It seems that if you do that, you will not get any updates,
| including security updates?
| StillBored wrote:
| Yah, it sounds that way.
|
| Rolling forward to the head is required to get the most
| recent security updates. Which isn't that far away from how
| centos works today. With rhel you get security updates for
| the point releases (8.1,8.2,etc) for a while after the new
| point release comes out. With centos, the day that the newer
| version drops, they don't tend to roll security updates into
| the older ones.
| teilo wrote:
| These are not frozen releases. They are parallel streams
| that each get their own CVE updates from the corresponding
| RHEL release.
| teilo wrote:
| Not true.
|
| Q4: How will CVEs be handled in CentOS Stream? A: Security
| issues will be updated in CentOS Stream after they are solved
| in the current RHEL release. Obviously, embargoed security
| releases can not be publicly released until after the embargo
| is lifted. While there will not be any SLA for timing, Red
| Hat Engineers will be building and testing other packages
| against these releases. If they do not roll in the updates,
| the other software they build could be impacted and therefore
| need to be redone. There is therefore a vested interest for
| them to get these updates in so as not to impact their other
| builds and there should be no issues getting security
| updates.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| It used to be
|
| Fedora -> RHEL -> CentOS
|
| with the addition of CentOS stream it was becoming
|
| Fedora -> CentOS Stream -> RHEL -> CentOS
|
| now what it is
|
| Fedora -> CentOS Stream -> RHEL
| kbenson wrote:
| From https://www.centos.org/centos-stream/
|
| _CentOS Stream
|
| Continuously delivered distro that tracks just ahead of Red Hat
| Enterprise Linux (RHEL) development, positioned as a midstream
| between Fedora Linux and RHEL. For anyone interested in
| participating and collaborating in the RHEL ecosystem, CentOS
| Stream is your reliable platform for innovation._
|
| That doesn't seem to be what you think it is, at least in my
| eyes. I'm definitely not looking to run something positioned
| between Fedora and RHEL. There's already enough updates every
| month (including multiple kernel updates a month sometimes)
| that it's hard to keep the fleet updated. I definitely don't
| need stuff ahead of RHEL where I can assume I'm a bit of a
| guinea pig to test out the coming RHEL update.
| teilo wrote:
| From the FAQ https://centos.org/distro-faq/ :
|
| "Q6: Will there be separate/parallel/simultaneous streams for
| 8, 9, 10, etc?
|
| "A: Each major release will have a branch, similar to how
| CentOS Linux is currently structured; however, CentOS Stream
| is designed to focus on RHEL development, so only the latest
| Stream will have the marketing focus of the CentOS Project.
|
| "Because RHEL development cycles overlap, there will be times
| when there are multiple code branches in development at the
| same time.This allows users time to plan migrations and
| development work without being surprised by sudden changes.
|
| "Specifically, since the RHEL release cadence is every 3
| years, and the full support window is 5 years, this gives an
| overlap of approximately 2 years between one stream and the
| next."
|
| Also from Q2:
|
| "We will not be producing a CentOS Linux 9, as a rebuild of
| RHEL 9. Instead CentOS Stream 9 fulfills this role. (See Q6
| below regarding the overlap between concurrent streams.)"
|
| So it sounds to me like my assumption is correct: There will
| be separate streams reflecting each RHEL release.
|
| Read the whole FAQ. This is not what people think it is.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Absolutly not, it's going to be the Fedora version of RHEL.
| Pretty clear:
|
| "If you are using CentOS Linux 8 in a production environment,
| and are concerned that CentOS Stream will not meet your needs,
| we encourage you to contact Red Hat about options."
|
| Of course no one want to run CentOS Stream because it's going
| to be broken / unstable, completely the opposite of what CentOS
| is.
| nemetroid wrote:
| Fedora is the Fedora version of RHEL. Are you saying that
| CentOS Stream is going to be directly equivalent to Fedora?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| That's what it sounds. Maybe Fedora/CentOS/RHEL ::
| Dev/Test/Prod
| bonzini wrote:
| Fedora is (up to) years ahead of RHEL, and periodically
| forked. CentOS stream is up to a few months ahead of RHEL,
| and developed from the same Fedora fork that RHEL is.
| pmlnr wrote:
| You want stability? Pay up!
|
| In essence.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Thanks IBM. Now I'll have to revisit what OS to deploy at various
| remote experiments. I suppose this might be the kick needed to
| revive SL though.
|
| They also conveniently waited until right after EL6 EOL...
| nix23 wrote:
| Oh true what happens with Cern now? Debian? FreeBSD ;)
| cozzyd wrote:
| There is a long legacy of EL integration and know-how in
| various particle physics experiments (and research computing
| clusters, for that matter...).
|
| If RH doesn't release some "Academic Version" (but who would
| even trust that at this point?), then I suspect revival of
| Scientific Linux or adoption of _shudders_ Oracle Linux is
| more likely than a switch to Debian. FreeBSD is probably a
| non-starter.
| nix23 wrote:
| >long legacy of EL integration and know-how in various
| particle physics experiments
|
| That has nothing todo with a Distribution, maybe with linux
| but Redhat...pff....Looong-LTS that was the plus.
|
| Oracle Linux...no one and especially cern would ever risk
| that.
| cwyers wrote:
| From Red Hat's release:
|
| ```There are different kinds of CentOS users, and we are working
| with the CentOS Project Governing Board to tailor programs that
| meet the needs of these different user groups. In the first half
| of 2021, we plan to introduce low- or no-cost programs for a
| variety of use cases, including options for open source projects
| and communities and expansion of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux
| Developer subscription use cases to better serve the needs of
| systems administrators. We'll share more details as these
| initiatives coalesce.```
|
| Probably should have had their ducks in a row there to announce
| both things at once, I think.
| toyg wrote:
| But then you would have nothing to announce when saying "we
| listened to the community and blablabla".
|
| This way they can keep up the illusion that they do everything
| with good intentions and did not expect people would get angry.
| "We are not the baddies, here's some sweetener to prove it!"
| Iolaum wrote:
| I m torn about this move. My gut reaction was that this was a
| bean-counter move. Thinking more about it the key issues I see
| with this move are:
|
| - CENTOS fills a need, that many users have and superficially it
| looks like Red Hat (IBM) is now abandoning addressing it. On the
| other hand Red Hat does offer RHEL for free (gratis) [0] and that
| should fill the needs of CENTOS users (right?). However it would
| have been much better if that option was mentioned in the
| announcement.
|
| - I thought Fedora was upstream of RHEL. However after thinking
| more about it I realised that RHEL has a significant delta over
| Fedora. I 'm guessing CENTOS stream will be partway between
| Fedora and RHEL. It makes sense from Red Hats open development
| approach to have the delta between Fedora and RHEL happen in the
| open. Done right that should strengthen RHEL.
|
| - Why the rush to drop support for CENTOS 8? I m sure some people
| are using it in production and they are unlikely to to want to
| move to this new CENTOS stream. It's a new OS distribution with a
| philosophy different to the one that was right for them!
|
| Overall I 'd prefer if the new thing was called RHEL stream and
| provided for free (gratis) as CENTOS stream is. Also making more
| explicit the RHEL availability for free instead of having
| competing brands would be good. Now that there are competing
| vendors (Amazon Linux, Oracle Linux) trying to entice users it'd
| be better to strengthen RHEL brand rather than dilute it with
| multiple offerings. Unless RedHat/IBM plans to pull the plug on
| option [0].
|
| [0]: https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/03/31/no-cost-
| rhel-d...
| ilikepi wrote:
| > On the other hand Red Hat does offer RHEL for free (gratis)
| [0] and that should fill the needs of CENTOS users (right?)
|
| They offer a no-cost "developer subscription" of RHEL, but I'd
| wager the majority of users are running CentOS on servers.
| FeistySkink wrote:
| Is there a free non-developer, i.e. home version of RHEL
| without any subscription/registration?
| em500 wrote:
| http://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-isos.html
|
| Disclaimer: not affiliated with Oracle in any way. This is
| just the closest thing to a plain RHEL8 clone I know of,
| other than CentOS8.
| Macha wrote:
| It may take a hard sell for people looking for something
| more open than RHEL after this to use anything from Oracle.
| Twirrim wrote:
| I work for Oracle on their cloud platform (including
| reasonably closely with the Oracle Linux team, as my team
| is responsible for the main platform images).
|
| Speaking entirely for myself, opinions my own, may not
| reflect my employer etc. etc:
|
| I came in to this job expecting OL to just be a CentOS
| clone, and not really expecting much from the kernel they
| ship with it.
|
| It is both a CentOS clone, and a bunch more. Oracle takes
| the CentOS packages and applies bug fixes etc. that
| upstream RedHat has failed or refused to apply, so I've
| actually found OL to suffer from fewer problems than
| CentOS, and we've even had to apply mitigations for CentOS
| 6 for stuff we haven't had to do to any other OS we
| distribute. For entirely selfish reasons, I was really glad
| to see CentOS 6 go end of life last month.
|
| On top of that the OL team hires a significant number of
| upstream kernel developers, including the core maintainers
| for a number of components, like XFS, Xen, and so on, and
| produces the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (a really
| curious choice of marketing terminology), that incorporates
| mainstream bug and security patches, while being closer to
| mainstream than RHEL/CentOS, and the kernel patches
| submitted upstream by OL devs.
| FeistySkink wrote:
| So is it a drop-in replacement for CentOS 8.x without any
| nonsense? I.e. same packages, compatibility with
| upstream, etc.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Should be. It's CentOS packages with rebranding and maybe
| some custom fixes on top. There are two kernels that ship
| with it, either the RedHat Compatibility Kernel (RHCK),
| or the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK).
|
| I would point out, I'm not in the OL org, I have
| absolutely no idea what this change means for Oracle
| Linux. Oracle Linux is based off the CentOS sources as
| that's the only way that RedHat was making the source
| code to _their_ distribution available (there way of
| meeting the terms of the GPL). RedHat has to make their
| source code available in one form or another so I can 't
| imagine that this would have any impact on OL, but that's
| entirely guess work.
| em500 wrote:
| I didn't know Oracle builds from CentOS rather than RHEL
| sources. Nor that RHEL doesn't release sources anymore?
|
| If that's true, I wonder how Oracle got some of their 8.x
| releases out much earlier than CentOS. (Oracle Linux 8.3
| 2020-11-13 vs CentOS 8.3 2020-12-08, Oracle Linux 8.0
| 2019-07-19 vs CentOS 8.0 2019-09-24.) I'm assuming here
| without verification that both track the RHEL 8 point
| releases.
| toyg wrote:
| if i remember correctly, RHEL source dumps always lacked
| some machinery to actually produce a working release;
| that's where CentOS were doing actual work, painstakingly
| replicating all the compilation quirks to end up with RPM
| builds that matched RHEL. That's likely why another clone
| might want to start from CentOS rather than RHEL sources.
| em500 wrote:
| That doesn't answer my question how Oracle got some 8.x
| builds released weeks/months earlier than CentOS.
| kcb wrote:
| The free developer license seems pretty useless for larger
| organizations and OS licenses aren't managed by developers in
| general anyway.
|
| > _Yes, but only one no-cost Red Hat Developer Subscription can
| be added to a user account. While it is possible to have each
| developer register for their own account, this is not ideal
| from a management or efficiency standpoint. For example, if a
| company wanted no-cost Red Hat Developer Subscriptions to cover
| 100 developers, each developer would need to individually
| register and independently create 100 accounts that need to be
| tracked and maintained. For enterprises that use Red Hat
| Satellite to manage multiple systems, all 100 accounts would
| need to be added individually. Accepting the terms and
| conditions and renewing the subscription annually would need to
| be done individually and manually for all 100 accounts. Staff
| turnover in the development team would create additional
| management challenges with individual accounts. Therefore in
| terms of lost productivity, managing individual no-cost
| subscriptions will not be cost-effective for many groups.
|
| Many development organizations benefit from having Red Hat
| Developer Support. Cost effective bundles are available that
| include support with a pack of 25 Developer Suite subscriptions
| that can be managed from a single account. Each of these
| subscriptions is based on systems, rather that users._
| mattdm wrote:
| Stay tuned.
| davoneus wrote:
| Yea sure, that's the way to handle this kind of
| announcement. 'We're killing CentOS 8 and you need to wait
| several months to see the 'supposed' good things this move
| brings.' Yea right.... All this '1H/1Q 2021' does is let
| IBM/RedHat determine how bad the fallout is before trying
| to cover their backsides.
| Yeroc wrote:
| Exactly. It boggles the mind the RH would make the
| announcement without having the new plans in place.
| tenderfault wrote:
| Q5: Does this mean that CentOS Stream is the RHEL BETA test
| platform now? A: No. CentOS Stream will be getting fixes and
| features ahead of RHEL. Generally speaking, we expect CentOS
| Stream to have fewer bugs and more runtime features than RHEL
| until those packages make it into the RHEL release.
|
| Q: is the sky blue? A: no. it's blue.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| > CentOS Stream to have fewer bugs and more runtime features
| than RHEL
|
| more bugs, surely....
| brnt wrote:
| How viable is CentOS Stream on the desktop? Fedora moves a bit
| too fast sometimes, but CentOS too slow.
| mattdm wrote:
| CentOS Stream is going to move at the same pace as RHEL, just
| ahead of it.
| brnt wrote:
| What does that mean? That it is more up to date than RHEL?
| How far behind Fedora is that?
| mattdm wrote:
| Fedora releases every six months. RHEL has a major release
| every three years, with minor releases every six months.
|
| The major release of RHEL is usually forked from a Fedora
| version about a year before the major release, so with some
| exceptions software versions tend to be about a year behind
| those in a Fedora release initially, and then as RH
| backports patches rather than revving versions, drifts
| further.
|
| It's the patches and smaller updates -- and new hardware
| enablement in the full-support phase -- that will be
| landing in CentOS Stream. Previously, this stuff was
| developed internally and only released to the world at the
| minor-release drop every six months. Now, it'll be
| developed in a shared space. So what you'll have in CentOS
| Stream is whatever is intended to ship in a RHEL minor
| update within six months.
|
| There may occasionally be a situation where an update
| introduces bugs into Stream that would have been caught by
| QA before a public minor RHEL release and subsequent CentOS
| Linux rebuild. But I don't actually expect that to happen
| enough to worry about in any case where you can justify not
| paying for actual supported RHEL in the first place.
| ilikejam wrote:
| I wonder if it would it be possible to 'dnf downgrade' a CentOS
| Stream host to the same package version as a RHEL8 host?
| garyrichardson wrote:
| There's lots of negative reaction going on, but this has happened
| before. CentOS grew out of RedHat Linux going away and Fedora
| being the feeder for RHEL. At the time there were a bunch of
| competitors that were building the RHEL source. CentOS ended up
| "winning".
|
| I fully expect this to happen again. CentOS will wither and die
| because no one actually needs the cutting edge repo -- Ubuntu has
| a way better process for this. RHEL is build on open source. They
| publish their SPRM packages. A bunch of people will grab these
| and start bootstrapping DentOS and everyone will move to this.
| IBM will be sliced up by PE and RedHat will be owned by someone
| else. 10 years will go by and RHEL will acquire the leading
| "DentOS" and today's DevOps will be tomorrow's greybeards and
| will patiently wait for EentOS to emerge.
| ossusermivami wrote:
| i don't think in 10 years we will be installing distro on
| servers as we know it, watch this space!
| aprdm wrote:
| What will change...? A lot of F500 companies have a lot of
| infrastructure and changes are not fast.. HPC industry is
| another one of those. Unless you mean startups?
| disbeliefbee wrote:
| ^this.
|
| I believe Red Hat is anticipating this movement and betting
| on other things. Playing the long game.
|
| It's sad, the community is sad, the employees are sad. But
| company-wise it makes sense.
| awill wrote:
| No it doesn't. Support your stuff until you have a
| replacement.
| viraptor wrote:
| Are you thinking about RedHat Atomic Linux Server?
| foobarbazetc wrote:
| A lot of justified complaints here but the Oracle build of RHEL
| is 100% free and always up to date (I.e. while CentOS still
| doesn't have 8.3 out, Oracle had it out 9 days after RH).
|
| Yes, Oracle sucks but it's a better RHEL build than CentOS was.
| hddherman wrote:
| Very disappointing, since I based my OS decision on their support
| cycle, which has now been thrown out the window. Guess that I
| will be going back to Debian again
|
| And to top it off, today was the day when a CentOS 8 kernel
| update broke ZFS. Again.
| bsg75 wrote:
| > today was the day when a CentOS 8 kernel update broke ZFS
|
| This issue? https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/11307
| hddherman wrote:
| Yes, I believe that's the one, and this isn't the first time
| a CentOS specific issue has been discovered.
|
| For comparison, I have a Debian 10 box running since
| February. Also runs ZFS, updates and restarts every day, and
| absolutely 0 issues with that setup.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Time to EOL all our CentOS platforms and migrate them to Debian.
|
| Every time a corporation takes over an open source project it
| absolutely ruins it. We need some kind of "enterprise open source
| cabal" of people who can work on open source projects without any
| IP or copyright going to the company so the companies can't
| unilaterally screw the project.
| sparc24 wrote:
| https://www.change.org/p/centos-governing-board-do-not-destr...
| em500 wrote:
| To me this news is at once shocking, and blindingly obvious in
| hindsight.
|
| Shocking, because I'd never imagined they'd kill off CentOS 8 so
| early. CentOS 8.0 dates from Sept 2019, so it's killed in just
| the 3rd year of its presumed 10 year lifespan. I could read the
| tea leaves when they announced this Stream thingy recently, but
| I'd thought they would at least hold off till RHEL9 to pull the
| lever.
|
| Blindingly obvious, of course, because Red Hat bought CentOS,
| presumably with real $$$, and IBM bought Red Hat for $34bln.
|
| What's going to happen next? Microsoft buying Canonical and all
| businesses running either IBM Linux or Microsoft Linux? Crazier
| things have happened...
| marktangotango wrote:
| It's a money grab, pure and simple. They've (Redhat, let alone
| IBM) done it before (see below).
|
| What happens in practice with this sort of "rolling release" is
| users end up patching endlessly in production, which no sane
| person or organization would ever want to do. This was the
| exact situation for another Redhat acquisition for years now.
| JBoss EAP and community editions (wildfly now I suppose),
| everyone who could moved off of JBoss long ago.
| busterarm wrote:
| Except IBM thinks that this will convert everyone to RHEL
| licenses and I'm positive that is not what's going to happen.
|
| Ubuntu is already the default for people with ML pipelines
| and more and more vendors are targeting Ubuntu first for
| their software.
|
| CentOS will be effectively dead for a lot of companies
| starting next year (or 2024). (At least we aren't planning on
| licensing 10^5 systems on RHEL...). I imagine for those same
| companies, RHEL isn't far behind it.
|
| What's even worse here is that at least for us there are some
| things that we pay for RHEL for. If we switch all of our
| other servers, those RHEL licenses won't be continuing
| either.
|
| Obvious, but stupid.
| Yeroc wrote:
| This. We run CentOS for non-critical stuff and RHEL for
| stuff that really needs support. If we need to switch off
| CentOS we certainly won't be using RHEL either. Doesn't
| make sense to be running a Debian flavour mixed with RHEL
| since the two a significantly different.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Why wouldn't they switch to Debian instead? Their emphasis
| on stability matches that of CentOS more than Ubuntu, or at
| least did.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Ubuntu has more predictable long term support.
| busterarm wrote:
| Because some important vendors don't target Debian
| whereas they do target Ubuntu.
|
| Canonical and RedHat are paying the salaries of the
| people steering the direction of Linux as a whole.
| They're forcing you to choose between the two.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Your forgetting Suse, I'll bet they take a big chunk of
| the customer base. OpenSuse LEAP is now identical to SLES
| and it can be converted easily if you want support.
| apecat wrote:
| But LEAP is only supported for 36 months?
| https://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime
|
| That's pretty weak sauce even compared to the five years
| Debian and Ubuntu offer. And Debian actually supports all
| their packages, unlike Ubuntu which tricks people into
| installing unpatched garbage from 'universe'
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Yes clearly: we use CentOS at work because it's free (as in
| beer). If I go to my boss to ask money for a RedHat license
| he would laugh me out of his office.
| briffle wrote:
| Its time for a new internet rule. If Oracle or IBM buys your
| vendor, you should be migrating.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Should probably add Salesforce to that list too. They're
| basically the new Oracle.
| macintux wrote:
| And CA, where software goes to die.
| [deleted]
| NDizzle wrote:
| Sad, but accurate.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's almost true for any project getting acquired. The big
| EvilCorp will always have it's overbearing corporatey
| corporateness crush the things that made the project so cool
| it attracted their attention to it. There are very few
| projects that actually improved from being acquired.
| whatsmyusername wrote:
| This isn't a new rule. This has been the standard for a long
| time.
| space_ghost wrote:
| FreeBSD is starting to look really good.
| bluedino wrote:
| What are the usual roadblocks for people?
| apecat wrote:
| I would agree that BSD systems are nicer to look at, and
| FreeBSD supporting major releases for five years, with
| forcing people to install point releases once a year is
| really quite nice.
|
| But I don't see BSD becoming practical as a platform to run
| (commercial enterprise) Linux software, when it's already a
| pain to get packages and support for anything that's not
| RHEL/CentOS.
| toast0 wrote:
| It's not ideal, but you can run Linux software on FreeBSD.
| Commercial enterprise tends to be conservative and not need
| bleeding edge Linux interfaces that may not be available
| through the linux emulation layer yet.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I agree. I've been seeing more and more about the BSD's
| online recently, and to be quite honest, I'm happy about
| that.
|
| Just installed OpenBSD for the first time the other day, and
| am loving it.
| liv-io wrote:
| This might help you on your start:
|
| https://github.com/liv-io/ansible-roles-bsd
| Shared404 wrote:
| Looks like a nice resource, many thanks!
| lucasyvas wrote:
| Is this meant to make RHEL more attractive than CentOS because
| now it will be more stable?
| sim-o-lacrum wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if this means that another project will
| crop up soon-ish which does what CentOS did before, rebuild RHEL
| so there is a stable, boring distribution for people who want
| RHEL without wanting or being able to pay RH.
| em500 wrote:
| There's already Oracle Linux. (Not and endorsement, not
| affiliated, just surprised that there seems very little
| awareness about it.)
| dotandimet wrote:
| I think people who want a non-commercial RHEL will stay well
| away from any project with "Oracle" in the name.
| adamc wrote:
| Even some who don't mind commercial will. Oracle has a
| well-earned reputation of being difficult in licensing
| negotiations (there was even a Gartner piece on it at some
| point)... And what they did with the JDK just underscored
| that.
| derekp7 wrote:
| Maybe Scientific Linux can get revived.
| brnt wrote:
| I wonder what Cern Linux [1] are going to do. They're
| basically CentOS' CentOS.
|
| [1] https://linux.web.cern.ch/
| mrweasel wrote:
| Wasn't CentOS "adopted" by RedHat because no one else really
| wanted to do the work?
|
| A revived Scientific Linux could easy suffer the same fate.
| No one truly want to maintain a RedHat clone for little to no
| pay, while at the same time dealing request and complaints
| from companies who wants the benefits of RHEL, but no pay for
| the development and maintenance works done by RedHat.
|
| Realistically it's some bean counter at IBM who asked why
| RedHat is giving away the very same thing they're trying to
| sell. Said bean counter do have a point in my opinion.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > why RedHat is giving away the very same thing they're
| trying to sell
|
| Goodwill. I use CentOS and until now if I had a project
| were Linux support had been important I would have gone
| with Redhat. They can rot in hell now.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Have you heard of OpenSuse.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I don't like those news. CentOS was my "go to" distribution which
| I used by default if RAM was enough (it has surprisingly high
| requirements to install). I know it well. I'm using RHEL on my
| home server with developer license, but that allows only for a
| single instance, and I have more hosts.
|
| My ideal outcome would be if they would allow using real RHEL for
| any hobby projects and for commercial projects with income below
| some threshold, so I can start and grow with RHEL and then switch
| to paid option when I'd have enough income to warrant it.
|
| But it's IBM, so probably I'll have to switch to Debian which is
| good enough, but I'd miss SELinux, better systemd integration and
| more polished packages.
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