6 ms·

As has been discussed in other threads, RHEL's kernels are ancient compared to mainline and so they probably decided it's just too much work to continually back

As has been discussed in other threads, RHEL's kernels are ancient compared to mainline and so they probably decided it's just too much work to continually backport btrfs changes onto increasingly dated kernels. The sky is not (necessarily) falling.

jameskegel 9y ago
What put t in perspective for me was that here's a company who was a product and they make their money giving those products the utmost attention to things like compatibility and stability, and that means helping when these things break. This is not them making a political move or a line in the sand, this is them saying they can not afford to put the same 110% into this project so they're not going to carry it forward. It's the circle of life and I appreciate them for the rest of their works even if it can be mildly inconvenient in some cases.
danieldk 9y ago
But if they thought that btrfs was the future, they would definitely have put in the manpower to maintain and backport btrfs. Red Hat probably believes that XFS + LVM et al. can provide the necessary functionality for enterprise setups on a more reliable basis.
- catdog 9y ago
  They were never heavily invested in btrfs and they simply already employ a lot of XFS developers. I also don't think it's that easy to put more manpower into it. People with expertise in such such a rather complex niche field don't grow on trees.
  - 72deluxe 9y ago
    But do they grow on btrees? Filesystem joke, hilarious I know
greglindahl 9y ago
Uh, the entire value proposition of RHEL is that Red Hat will backport such patches, supporting customers who don't want to change anything until they move up to the next major release.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  That just feels tragic and silly. Probably many of the same types of shops that won't build the automated dev/ops infrastructures and end-to-end integration tests that let people move up stacks and updates rapidly. I haven't worked at a place that used RHEL in a long time. Unless you use one of their enterprise products like their directory or identity management system, there's no real reason to not use CentOS .. or really anything else for that matter.
  - kijin 9y ago
    Well... a very large portion of the value proposition of CentOS is that Red Hat will backport patches, and that CentOS users will get those patches for free, in case they don't want to change anything until they move up to the next major release.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    Not every company is a development shop. Some of us don't need -- or want -- the latest and greatest. I want servers that (other than installing updates) just work and don't have to be constantly maintained.
djsumdog 9y ago
Looks like they're running 3.10 on RHEL7.4, which is a pretty old long term release. I mean there are long term 4.x branches now.
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  It's not 3.10 from kernel.org. There are many backported patches adding support for selected new features, new hardware, etc. It doesn't make much sense to just compare numbers.
  - wtallis 9y ago
    Comparing the version numbers gives a good impression of how much of a maintenance burden RedHat is taking upon themselves. You can't simply presume that RedHat's 3.10 fork is missing any particular feature or fix from future upstream versions, but it's quite obvious that RedHat's fork has to be missing something by now, and probably a lot of somethings.
    - xfs 9y ago
      Enterprise customers care much more about stability than features. Backporting features is always easy, if you consider the amount of work needed to have enterprise level guarantee on their quality. Weeding out bugs in features is much, much harder.
    - jlgaddis 9y ago
      I've got machines that have been running 7 since very shortly after GA and I can't say that I'm missing out on anything that I need.

jameskegel 9y ago

What put t in perspective for me was that here's a company who was a product and they make their money giving those products the utmost attention to things like compatibility and stability, and that means helping when these things break. This is not them making a political move or a line in the sand, this is them saying they can not afford to put the same 110% into this project so they're not going to carry it forward. It's the circle of life and I appreciate them for the rest of their works even if it can be mildly inconvenient in some cases.

danieldk 9y ago

But if they thought that btrfs was the future, they would definitely have put in the manpower to maintain and backport btrfs. Red Hat probably believes that XFS + LVM et al. can provide the necessary functionality for enterprise setups on a more reliable basis.

catdog 9y ago
They were never heavily invested in btrfs and they simply already employ a lot of XFS developers. I also don't think it's that easy to put more manpower into it. People with expertise in such such a rather complex niche field don't grow on trees.
- 72deluxe 9y ago
  But do they grow on btrees? Filesystem joke, hilarious I know

greglindahl 9y ago

Uh, the entire value proposition of RHEL is that Red Hat will backport such patches, supporting customers who don't want to change anything until they move up to the next major release.

djsumdog 9y ago
That just feels tragic and silly. Probably many of the same types of shops that won't build the automated dev/ops infrastructures and end-to-end integration tests that let people move up stacks and updates rapidly. I haven't worked at a place that used RHEL in a long time. Unless you use one of their enterprise products like their directory or identity management system, there's no real reason to not use CentOS .. or really anything else for that matter.
- kijin 9y ago
  Well... a very large portion of the value proposition of CentOS is that Red Hat will backport patches, and that CentOS users will get those patches for free, in case they don't want to change anything until they move up to the next major release.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  Not every company is a development shop. Some of us don't need -- or want -- the latest and greatest. I want servers that (other than installing updates) just work and don't have to be constantly maintained.

djsumdog 9y ago

Looks like they're running 3.10 on RHEL7.4, which is a pretty old long term release. I mean there are long term 4.x branches now.

vbezhenar 9y ago
It's not 3.10 from kernel.org. There are many backported patches adding support for selected new features, new hardware, etc. It doesn't make much sense to just compare numbers.
- wtallis 9y ago
  Comparing the version numbers gives a good impression of how much of a maintenance burden RedHat is taking upon themselves. You can't simply presume that RedHat's 3.10 fork is missing any particular feature or fix from future upstream versions, but it's quite obvious that RedHat's fork has to be missing something by now, and probably a lot of somethings.
  - xfs 9y ago
    Enterprise customers care much more about stability than features. Backporting features is always easy, if you consider the amount of work needed to have enterprise level guarantee on their quality. Weeding out bugs in features is much, much harder.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    I've got machines that have been running 7 since very shortly after GA and I can't say that I'm missing out on anything that I need.