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CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream

• jsiepkes 6y ago
  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.
  • fogihujy 6y ago
    > 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 6y ago
      And Scientific Linux, and Amazon Linux, etc.
      • em500 6y ago
        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 6y ago
          There's also Springdale Linux.
          • kasabali 6y ago
            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 6y ago
    If they just want a free (beer) RHEL clone, the best choice might turn out to be ... Oracle Linux. Who would have thought?
    • m3adow 6y ago
      Isn't Amazon Linux basically the same? Or is that a fork of CentOS in the first place?
      • em500 6y ago
        Can I download and run Amazon Linux at home (non-vm)?
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
        • zxspectrum1982 6y ago
          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 6y ago
        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 My familiarity with Amazon Linux is about 4 years out-of-date these days, but it was a RHEL/CentOS clone with a number of the core libraries like glibc being updated and maintained by Amazon on an independent life cycle.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 6y ago
      > 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?
      • 6y ago
  • codetrotter 6y ago
    > 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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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.
  • syshum 6y ago
    >>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 6y ago
    > 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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        Sounds straightforward to maintain your own fork in that case.
      • tomnipotent 6y ago
        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 6y ago
          Agreed, a significant part of Linux's graphical stack (GNOME, mesa, pipewire, etc.) is maintained by people whose email end in @redhat.com
          • kcb 6y ago
            For now. As with all acquisitions it's only a matter of when.
            • tomnipotent 6y ago
              Except acquisitions work out just as often as they don't.
  • Twirrim 6y ago
    RHEL bought CentOS 6 years ago. Note that the announcement blog post points folks to using RedHat instead. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish succeeded?
  • ilovetux 6y ago
    > 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 6y ago
      I think that your use-case matches perfectly with RHEL free developer license.
      • jsiepkes 6y ago
        The free RHEL development license doesn't allow for even a whim of something that could be considered production usage. So you can't make a proof of concept with the RHEL developer license in which you let "the business", customers, etc. toy around for a while.
    • acomjean 6y ago
      A group of us was sent to Red Hat for a kernel class (week long, excellent) over 10 years ago. We were moving off HP-UX which offered really excellent real time extensions (disabling interups on a per cpu basis...processor sets, and other fun) The instructor told us if we wanted to try some of the things we were doing in class to experiment more, we could try it on CentOS. it was the practically the same. This was before Red Hat “ acquired” them.
• lucasyvas 6y ago
  Is this meant to make RHEL more attractive than CentOS because now it will be more stable?
• sim-o-lacrum 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    There's already Oracle Linux. (Not and endorsement, not affiliated, just surprised that there seems very little awareness about it.)
    • dotandimet 6y ago
      I think people who want a non-commercial RHEL will stay well away from any project with "Oracle" in the name.
      • adamc 6y ago
        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 6y ago
    Maybe Scientific Linux can get revived.
    • brnt 6y ago
      I wonder what Cern Linux [1] are going to do. They're basically CentOS' CentOS. [1] https://linux.web.cern.ch/ https://linux.web.cern.ch/
    • mrweasel 6y ago
      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.
• kcb 6y ago
  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.
  • thinkmassive 6y ago
    > 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!
    • gtirloni 6y ago
      Agreed. I never thought there was any confusion about what CentOS meant. This feels like B.S.
      • thinkmassive 6y ago
        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 6y ago
          RedHat provides developer subscriptions to their products: https://developers.redhat.com/articles/getting-red-hat-developer-subscription-what-rhel-users-need-know https://developers.redhat.com/articles/getting-red-hat-devel...
          • mattdm 6y ago
            And this will be expanding to cover more use cases. See https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q10 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._
• syshum 6y ago
  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?
  • curt15 6y ago
    Would it make sense to regard CentOS Stream as essentially CentOS/RHEL Beta?
    • xernus 6y ago
      Yes.
      • NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
        I mean they say "no", but it's definitely something less than the full production release.
    • lmns 6y ago
      It's basically the beta of the next RHEL minor release, not a beta of a next major release.
  • speeder 6y ago
    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.
• messe 6y ago
  > 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?
  • Tom4hawk 6y ago
    > What about everybody who built their product on the assumption that there would be a stable CentOS until then? 1. They can start paying RedHat 2. They can hire/delegate someone to maintain patches for them 3. They can migrate to something else ;)
    • chasil 6y ago
      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/ 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.
      • messe 6y ago
        My god. If it gets to the point that your best option is to migrate to Oracle, I think you need to really question reality itself. (My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer; I'm in support at the moment, so foresee myself having to deal with the aftermath of this CentOS decision a year from now)
• messe 6y ago
  > 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 6y ago
    Yes. https://wiki.centos.org/About/Product https://wiki.centos.org/About/Product It used to be this. https://web.archive.org/web/20201101131417/https://wiki.centos.org/About/Product https://web.archive.org/web/20201101131417/https://wiki.cent...
    • folkrav 6y ago
      Wow. Violently disingenuous.
    • sjs382 6y ago
      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=diff&rev2=123&rev1=122 https://wiki.centos.org/action/info/About/Product?action=dif...
    • moray 6y ago
      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 6y ago
    > 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?
    • 6y ago
• linuxftw 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Official CentOS/RHEL is more like Debian Stable. The new CentOS "Stream" sounds like it will be more like Debian Testing.
    • thesuperbigfrog 6y ago
      Exactly. As stated in https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-building-innovative-future-enterprise-linux 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)
      • the_why_of_y 6y ago
        There is no real equivalent to CentOS Stream in Debian's release model. Perhaps the closest is "the DAK upload queue for Debian stable", but that tends to contain mostly security updates, and according to other posts in this thread that is the one case where CentOS Stream is not an upstream of RHEL. CentOS Stream contains feature backports, which generally don't happen in Debian stable, but it's only very specific backports, not every package gets updated like in Debian testing. I'd put it like: Fedora rawhide <=> Debian unstable Fedora <=> Debian testing CentOS Stream <=> DAK upload queue for Debian stable RHEL <=> Debian stable
    • linuxftw 6y ago
      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.
• nrclark 6y ago
  What will this mean for Fedora? Doesn’t Fedora already occupy the niche of “Redhat-unstable”?
  • endperform 6y ago
    According to the FAQ, specifically question 15: https://centos.org/distro-faq/ 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 6y ago
    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.)
    • em500 6y ago
      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.
    • macspoofing 6y ago
      >This is huge and awesome good news. So why the negativity at this "huge and awesome good news"?
• xernus 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    "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 6y ago
      Facebook have their own kernel developers. It was a selling point one of their teams used to try to lure me there.
      • enz 6y ago
        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)
        • someperson 6y ago
          "We spend company resources on work that gets released as open-source software" is always preferable to a company never contributing back to OSS.
• neilwilson 6y ago
  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.
• teilo 6y ago
  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.
  • kbenson 6y ago
    From https://www.centos.org/centos-stream/ 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 6y ago
      From the FAQ https://centos.org/distro-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.
• charlesdaniels 6y ago
  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.
  • bovermyer 6y ago
    I don't know what your use case is, but one of the flavors of BSD might be an option for you.
    • charlesdaniels 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        OpenSuse Leap, with XFS or BTRF sounds right for you.
  • stryan 6y ago
    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.
  • mattdm 6y ago
    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.
• dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  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.
• CrLf 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.
• Iolaum 6y ago
  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-developer-subscription-now-available/ https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/03/31/no-cost-rhel-d...
  • ilikepi 6y ago
    > 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 6y ago
    Is there a free non-developer, i.e. home version of RHEL without any subscription/registration?
    • em500 6y ago
      http://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-isos.html 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.
• thesuperbigfrog 6y ago
  >> 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) quote source: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-building-innovative-future-enterprise-linux https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-building-innova... (linked from the article)
  • santoshalper 6y ago
    Seems like that is accurate. I am struck by how cleaner and simpler Debian's naming scheme is. If you don't follow the Red Hat world closely, those names are going to be very confusing.
    • einpoklum 6y ago
      > I am struck by how cleaner and simpler Debian's naming scheme is It's just a simple common-sense scheme, it's not the result of deep thought. What you're struck by is how marketing-oriented the RedHat repository naming scheme seems to be...
  • danieldk 6y ago
    So, where does that make Fedora Rawhide fit?
  • tmottabr 6y ago
    i dont agree with this.. in debian testing is the next major version, while centos stream is testing for the next minor release. It is fedora that is testing for next major release. sid would be similar to fedora rawhide.. sid <=> fedora rawhide testing (bullseye) <=> fedora, altough not every fedora became a rhel stable (buster) <=> rhel centos stream would be likely similar to having stable with the proposed repo fully enabled.
• balozi 6y ago
  > 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.
• FeistySkink 6y ago
  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.
  • AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
    Your whole family runs CentOS as their desktop operating system?
    • FeistySkink 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
          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.
• TavsiE9s 6y ago
  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/ https://centos.org/distro-faq/
  • Twirrim 6y ago
    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.
    • syshum 6y ago
      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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        > Not true, because the current CO is not a rolling update. I'm not sure where I claimed it was?
        • zerocrates 6y ago
          They're saying that Stream will be getting the normal package updates first as a kind of testbed, which is different than before. So you're getting some instability by being first in line for updates, but you're still second fiddle for security fixes.
• happyjack 6y ago
  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.
  • AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
    > 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.
• cozzyd 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Oh true what happens with Cern now? Debian? FreeBSD ;)
    • cozzyd 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        >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.
• brnt 6y ago
  How viable is CentOS Stream on the desktop? Fedora moves a bit too fast sometimes, but CentOS too slow.
  • mattdm 6y ago
    CentOS Stream is going to move at the same pace as RHEL, just ahead of it.
    • brnt 6y ago
      What does that mean? That it is more up to date than RHEL? How far behind Fedora is that?
      • mattdm 6y ago
        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.
• em500 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.
      • TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
        Why wouldn't they switch to Debian instead? Their emphasis on stability matches that of CentOS more than Ubuntu, or at least did.
• Veen 6y ago
  > 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 6y ago
    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.
    • cozzyd 6y ago
      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.
    • kcb 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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.
        • 6y ago
• pmlnr 6y ago
  You want stability? Pay up! In essence.
• awill 6y ago
  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 :(.
  • cozzyd 6y ago
    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).
    • j3th9n 6y ago
      Yep, that's exactly what I did.
  • apecat 6y ago
    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.
• aflat 6y ago
  So Centos 8 will be a beta test stream for features and fixes, but for CVEs it will lag behind RH. That's an interesting twist.
  • marcinzm 6y ago
    Seems a push for companies to move to RedHat licenses.
  • jabl 6y ago
    Isn't that how things already work wrt security updates on RHEL/CentOS? CentOS AFAIK doesn't get any advance warning, only once RHEL pushes out a security update they rebuild and release. Of course, with this it might be even slower, in that first RHEL pushes out the security update, and then people will start looking whether that change needs to be forward-ported to CentOS stream, or whether it can be used as-is etc.
• qz2 6y ago
  The real message is that if you want stability now, you have to pay for it with RHEL.
  • dilawar 6y ago
    I was out of the loop when IBM acquired RHEL. IBM strikes again. I've been experimenting with openSUSE lately. So far so good. Only if zypper can download packages in parallel, I don't have to wait for eons to build images.
• mcclung 6y ago
  Sounds like CentOS Stream will bring the pain to users and admins. Going forward, the answer to every stability question will be "maybe you should go buy Redhat". I had a bad feeling about the CentOS project when Redhat became involved as more than an upstream RPM source. I hope CentOS isn't turned into another Fedora. I'm sure many of you will be happy to tell me that I'm wrong. Please do.
  • gogopuppygogo 6y ago
    IBM needs to grow revenue and they don't innovate. They didn't buy Redhat as a charity. So... you are right...
  • rodgerd 6y ago
    I'd like to, but I think this is correct. This is 100% IBM beginning to actually bed in their take-over of Red Hat.
• thesuperbigfrog 6y ago
  CentOS Stream is RHEL Testing (like Debian Testing). As stated in https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-building-innovative-future-enterprise-linux https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/centos-stream-building-innova... "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)
  • carwyn 6y ago
    Almost, I'd say it's more like: Rawhide <=> Sid Fedora <=> Semi-stable-ish but short-lived and moves fast. CentOS Stream <=> Bullseye but possibly less stable than Fedora in parts. RHEL <=> Buster
  • tmottabr 6y ago
    CentOS does not have anything equivalent in Debian.. The closest i can find for it is in FreeBSD. FreeBSD 13-Current - Fedora Rawhide/Fedora FreeBSD 12-Stable - CentOS Stream FreeBSD 12.2-Release - RHEL CentOS Stream will be the testing for the next minor release of RHEL, i think the closest in debian would be stable with the proposed repo fully enabled. Between Debian and RH i see the following equivalency. unstable (sid) - Fedora Rawhide testing (bullseye) - Fedora, although not 100% equivalent as not all fedora releases became an RHEL, but fedora does act as testing for RHEL. stable (buster) - RHEL CentOS Stream is between testing and stable.
• jychang 6y ago
  So basically, instead of CentOS being as stable as RHEL, they're positioning it in between Fedora and RHEL stability. Basically the Debian Testing branch for RHEL. This is just a rebranding move to push businesses that were using CentOS to actually buy a RHEL license, lol.
  • trasz 6y ago
    Wait, RedHat owns CentOS?
    • jnkl 6y ago
      Yes. https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-January/020100.html https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-Janu...
      • jnkl 6y ago
        And btw: Red Hat is IBM.
        • colejohnson66 6y ago
          Well, subsidiary, but yes
    • SparkyMcUnicorn 6y ago
      I always considered CentOS to be (roughly) RHEL without the support. RHEL is nearly identical in practical use because they use the same libraries and tooling for the most part. I guess I've always just assumed CentOS was "Free RedHat".
  • bitcharmer 6y ago
    > 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 So basically not what your comment is trying to imply here. Also, what is "lol" about it?
• gmfawcett 6y ago
  Interesting development. What's the current difference between RHEL and Oracle Linux? Our institution used to be an RHEL shop, but switched to OL -- I just assumed that RHEL was historical at this point. [edit -- thanks for the answers. I realize now that my memory failed me... I mis-remembered that Oracle bought RedHat, not IBM.]
  • djeiasbsbo 6y ago
    Oracle Linux is RHEL... just with the Red Hat branding replaced by Oracle branding. I guess there are some other differences as well but that's the gist of it. It's mostly for Oracle products and has the oracle yum repositories preconfigured iirc. So their database products can be installed out of the box. But RHEL is considered the industry standard when it comes to corporate Linux distributions.
    • gmfawcett 6y ago
      Thanks, that helps. We're also an Oracle (database) shop, so the Oracle-specific repos are probably a plus in our case.
  • nicoburns 6y ago
    Presumably one big benefit is not having to deal with Oracle who are infamously difficult to deal with.
    • gmfawcett 6y ago
      Alas, for many of us that ship has already sailed. :)
• bzb6 6y ago
  People used to say that it’s possible to make money with OSS because Red Hat does it. This invalidates that already dated argument.
  • jniedrauer 6y ago
    Red Hat already staged their exit.
  • djeiasbsbo 6y ago
    How so? RHEL is open source... Red Hat also owns Centos.
• helen___keller 6y ago
  Putting aside what Red Hat wants, it's still open source. Why couldn't a new project replace centOS as the free alternative to RHEL?
  • jniedrauer 6y ago
    It's hard to replace all the people who were paid to maintain CentOS without another corporation stepping in. Large software projects like this unfortunately don't happen in a vacuum.
• hiram112 6y ago
  I've had a feeling, at least since the IBM purchase of Redhat, that the days of using Centos as a free replacement of RHEL with all the security updates and patches for absolutely free, are coming to an end. You'll either be forced to buy licenses or use a far less stable and secure version of stream. Or, of course, you can rent VMs with maintained distros from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc. on their cloud platforms. IBM bought Redhat for a reason, and if history is any guide, they'll begin aggressively pursuing large companies, governmental, educational, etc. users of Centos and push them to buy support licenses of Redhat.
• K33P4D 6y ago
  I remember setting up and building a 16node cent OS cluster in my undergrad for a special big data paper back in 2012, so sad to see this...long live forks
• vondur 6y ago
  They did say this: "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." So maybe if this pans out, a lot of projects will now be able to use RedHat EL proper.
  • vbezhenar 6y ago
    I'll love to use proper RHEL everywhere on my personal non-commercial projects. I'm using it on my NAS, but I'd love to use it on VPS as well.
• anonunivgrad 6y ago
  Is this just a ploy to get RHEL licensing $$$ while another project emerges to provide what CentOS used to? The whole point of CentOS was to be a carbon copy of RHEL. Then RedHat bought them and now this... If you successfully fill that void, maybe you too can be acquired by IBM/RH in a few years as they repeat the cycle.
  • topspin 6y ago
    > while another project emerges to provide what CentOS used to? This is an opportunity. Imagine Amazon stepping in and funding the CentOS replacement. They'd capture a huge chunk of the SME market within two years. Amazon already has its own distribution in the form of Amazon Linux, a derivative of RHEL. Seems like a short walk to provide an unsupported, Amazon branded, bare metal RHEL-based distribution that also happens to align its users with AWS. The really smart thing would be to start there but then fork slowly and eventually diverge from RHEL in fundamental ways.
• turminal 6y ago
  This is bad, but the way things were going for the last few years with Red Hat gaining more and more importance in the general linux ecosystem something like that happening was just inevitable.
• snicker7 6y ago
  Not obvious who would use CentOS Stream.
• dilawar 6y ago
  Among existing alternatives such as Ubuntu LTS, Debian, openSUSE, etc. which is the least likely to meet the CentOS fate (I mean acquired by a large corporation)?
  • yoyohello13 6y ago
    I'm not too familiar with the openSUSE team, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that Debian will remain independent. Ubuntu is already owned by a large corportation.
  • turminal 6y ago
    Debian, by a large margin. Ubuntu is already "owned" by Canonical and openSUSE is just a free counterpart to SUSE Linux Enterprise by SUSE software solutions GmbH in very much the same way CentOS was to RHEL in the recent years.
• phone8675309 6y ago
  How does this affect FermiLAB? They stopped development on Scientific Linux to rebase on CentOS and now CentOS might not be useful for their purposes.
  • chasil 6y ago
    Hello, Oracle Linux. http://linux.oracle.com http://linux.oracle.com
    • digitalsushi 6y ago
      isn't Oracle Linux just CentOS wtih an oracle sticker and a contract?
      • chasil 6y ago
        Oracle has a page describing the difference: https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos/ 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.
    • phone8675309 6y ago
      They specifically made Scientific Linux as a royalty free alternative to RHEL so I can’t imagine they’d jump to a royalty-encumbered value loss Oracle Linux distro.
• 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
  What is happening with open source lately. Just this today I am.reading about QT, CENTOS, MAPBOX, travis all ditching open source. Well I don't remember the qt story but yeah. What is the point of offering your software to the community as open source if the only end game is to make people dependent and then pull a fast one on them. Sigh
  • yoyohello13 6y ago
    Open Source is not the same as Free and Open Source (FOSS). If you want true software freedom, stick with communities or orgs based on the FOSS ideology. Big corporations cannot be FOSS, it's a conflict of interest for them.
  • orev 6y ago
    People need to eat and pay rent. New developers are doing everything on web/cloud and see no reason to invest time in open source on “legacy” on-prem systems, despite the fact that those are what underlie all of those higher level tiers. Since new developers are not stepping in, the older guys who started the projects just want to get away from the relentlessly thankless activity of giving stuff away for free, or maybe retire.
    • 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
      my question stands. if you are a corporation, why are you offering an open source in the first place? i am not talking about a library developer who built it for fun but because its MIT, every faang is using it extensively and the original dev is not getting any remuneration while faang is earning big bucks. that is not the issue here. specifically if travis had the idea to pull a bait and switch always to the community, isnt that bad? why offer "free for open source" in the first place when you know it will cost them money and developers need to earn? no open source community is begging for handouts.
      • AdrianB1 6y ago
        As a corporation you open source at least pieces needed for interoperability, that is a valid reason. Otherwise you can get into the pains of SMB/Samba or drivers for paid databases for more programming languages one is able to support. For example Microsoft is working on the PHP driver for SQL server, this helps them by opening the door to PHP developers to use MS SQL and eventually pay for Standard or Enterprise editions instead of using the free Express one. It is kind of a freemium game.
• GNOMES 6y ago
  Curious why people on here seem so abrasive to this so far. Have had a few work loads on Stream, and updates are just as "boring" as expected from CentOS. I seam to have more issue at work dealing with older versions of packages on CentOS that lag behind up to date packages on "unstable" distros. As a fan of rolling release (btw I use arch), I will love not having to deal with EOL CentOS upgrades at work.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• vbezhenar 6y ago
  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.
• adamc 6y ago
  Seems like RedHat wanting to make CentOS a less "safe" alternative to RHEL.
• DCKing 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    > 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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
    > 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.
• Keverw 6y ago
  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.
• garyrichardson 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    i don't think in 10 years we will be installing distro on servers as we know it, watch this space!
    • disbeliefbee 6y ago
      ^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 6y ago
        No it doesn't. Support your stuff until you have a replacement.
    • viraptor 6y ago
      Are you thinking about RedHat Atomic Linux Server?
    • aprdm 6y ago
      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?
• 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
  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.
• Tsiklon 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Red Hat has developer licenses. It might not end up being a shakedown, depending.
  • dpedu 6y ago
    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?
• GNOMES 6y ago
  Rolling release doesn't mean bleeding edge... Sounds like some of you never update
• ossusermivami 6y ago
  I am down to make a fork, like the original CentOS before they sell out, who's in ?
• ossusermivami 6y ago
  I'd love to have the original Centos project people doing an AMA and what they (really) think about this decision!
• liv-io 6y ago
  Seems like some folks are considering to create an alternative: https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/#comment-183642 https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/#com... https://join.slack.com/t/hpcng/shared_invite/zt-gy0st6mt-ijgUaSvfdeEOhfXXfIstrQ https://join.slack.com/t/hpcng/shared_invite/zt-gy0st6mt-ijg...
  • gbraad 6y ago
    Good luck, as it ain't that easy. Remember Whitebox Linux?
    • mgerdts 6y ago
      As I recall there was an announcement of packing up shop ahead of Katrina, followed by a few weeks of dwindling hope.
• foobarbazetc 6y ago
  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.
  • wombatpm 6y ago
    So was Java. Until it wasn’t.
• mixedCase 6y ago
  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.
• bubblethink 6y ago
  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.
  • jlgaddis 6y ago
    > Thanks, for all the fish, CentOS. The city of Tuttle, Oklahoma is grateful. Oh man, I had completely forgotten about that (although I suspect most people have by now)... since reading your comment, though, I have been sitting here giggling like a little kid just thinking about it. Thank you! -- For anyone who reads this and doesn't understand the reference to Tuttle, Oklahoma, well, go seek out the answer and prepare to be entertained, my friend! -- UPDATE: Actually, I'll save you some trouble, since I decided to go re-read all the details again myself: Start here, with a story from The Register that summarizes what happened: https://www.theregister.com/2006/03/24/tuttle_centos/ https://www.theregister.com/2006/03/24/tuttle_centos/ Afterwards, you'll almost certainly want to read the entire e-mail thread yourself. Fortunately, the Internet Archive has us covered: https://web.archive.org/web/20060326091856/https://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=127 https://web.archive.org/web/20060326091856/https://www.cento... Finally, thank bubblethink (with an extra Internet point, of course) for reminding us all of this incident!
• hddherman 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    > today was the day when a CentOS 8 kernel update broke ZFS This issue? https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/11307 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/11307
    • hddherman 6y ago
      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.
• IceWreck 6y ago
  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-_ 6y ago
    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-ijgUaSvfdeEOhfXXfIstrQ https://join.slack.com/t/hpcng/shared_invite/zt-gy0st6mt-ijg...
• tutunak 6y ago
  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.
• tenderfault 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    > CentOS Stream to have fewer bugs and more runtime features than RHEL more bugs, surely....
• znpy 6y ago
  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.
• sparc24 6y ago
  https://www.change.org/p/centos-governing-board-do-not-destroy-centos-by-using-it-as-a-rhel-upstream https://www.change.org/p/centos-governing-board-do-not-destr...
• Thaxll 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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).
        • Thaxll 6y ago
          https://thecloudmarket.com/stats#/by_platform_definition https://thecloudmarket.com/stats#/by_platform_definition Those are numbers for EC2 so a fairly accurate measurement.
          • theevilsharpie 6y ago
            Those are the number of images, not the number of instances.
• arminiusreturns 6y ago
  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
• loloquhwonedeo 6y ago
  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 :)
• abalashov 6y ago
  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"?
  • someperson 6y ago
    Why don't the telecoms just pay for RHEL? The December 31 2021 deadline is brutal for high-reliability infrastructure, but it principle the migration path is super simple, right?
    • abalashov 6y ago
      Some of them do. I've mainly got smaller companies and startup-type companies in mind.
  • tlamponi 6y ago
    Further, Debian gives a clean and normally very well working upgrade path, which I take anytime over Frankenstein backport updates keeping a distro release on life support until X years later one needs to redo everything.
• cwyers 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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!”
• jms55 6y ago
  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.
• ryanmjacobs 6y ago
  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.
• symlinkk 6y ago
  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.
  • circularfoyers 6y ago
    Is there anything beyond that feeling that might indicate this might be to the case?
  • _-david-_ 6y ago
    If that was the case they should have announced that now so people don't jump ship off CentOS prior to the announcement.
• unethical_ban 6y ago
  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.
• yayr 6y ago
  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?
• Jedd 6y ago
  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 https://www.debian.org/social_contract
• whatsmyusername 6y ago
  This is why I immediately switched our long term plans to Ubuntu after the IBM acquisition was announced.
• AsyncAwait 6y ago
  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.
• carwyn 6y ago
  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.
• ilikejam 6y ago
  I wonder if it would it be possible to 'dnf downgrade' a CentOS Stream host to the same package version as a RHEL8 host?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• fritex 6y ago
  Well, I am still using Debian distro.
• fomine3 6y ago
  Is CentOS Stream totally unacceptable for traditional CentOS users who don't need compatibility for RHEL?
• gbraad 6y ago
  It actually provides transparency on the development of RHEL and provides one of the oft requested things they couldn't; that missing features for a package or a slightly newer version of something. Jim Perrin explains it also here: https://jperrin.org/blog/thoughts-on-stream/ https://jperrin.org/blog/thoughts-on-stream/
• ikiris 6y ago
  This marks the end of my willingness to run anything on a redhat product ever again now that they've demonstrated that their commitments are worth nothing in the face of where they want their business to go.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Communitivity 6y ago
  It does not matter if nightlies are more stable than they used to be. It does not matter if nightlies never crash. If you work in an industry or corporation that is highly security conscious, i.e. that prizes risk mitigation over using the cutting edge or getting to market first above all else, then you won't be able to use nightlies. Security policy will dictate that you use use a stable versioned release, that the release be vetted through scripts/STIGs, and that the release be installed by Security+ certified and blessed admins. I just successfully pitched we go with Centos 8 at work. Tomorrow I have to go in and explain why we need to choose Centos 7, or Ubuntu. In my industry this kills Centos, it's as dead as Mr. Praline's Norwegian Blue [1]. I suspect that was IBM's intent all along, though it's only suspicion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Parrot_sketch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Parrot_sketch
  • jlgaddis 6y ago
    > If you work in an industry or corporation that is highly security conscious, i.e. that prizes risk mitigation over using the cutting edge or getting to market first above all else, then you won't be able to use nightlies. > Security policy will dictate that you use use a stable versioned release, that the release be vetted through scripts/STIGs, and that the release be installed by Security+ certified and blessed admins. I'd be quite surprised if your "security policy" has all of that and yet doesn't have a requirement for "commercial support" (i.e., Red Hat Enterprise Linux). Besides, if $employer "is highly security conscious", your machines are almost certainly airgapped and getting their updates from a Satellite server that you're already paying Red Hat for. AFAIK, CentOS is not now -- nor has it ever been -- "certified" for anything. Did that change at some point without me noticing?
    • newen 6y ago
      Pretty sure it did. CentOS is used by the government for classified areas. Though it might be phased out now after this change.
    • Communitivity 6y ago
      It is (or was) definitely possible to be security conscious and use an Open Source OS: * You can use reposync to update a copy of EPEL, PowerTools, etc. * You can use yum -q deplist PACKAGENAME to list dependencies * You can copy the necessary RPMs to a DMZ and apply security scans/tests, then take them to your boxes and install them Also, any corporation or organization like I'm talking about has internal approval/certification of software as usable on their networks. The Army formalized this as the CoN, Certificate of Networthiness.
• InitEnabler 6y ago
  It's really sad to see this. I really hope some people take up a mantle and start a continuation of CentOS 8 / 9. No mention of OpenMandriva as a alternative RPM distro.
• grammarnazzzi 6y ago
  The value of CentOS is that it's provides a free and stable RedHat build. Nobody needs or wants another Fedora. This seems like a round-a-bout way of killing the only RedHat alternative to the expensive commercial version of RedHat. If there is no Centos9, I'll probably move over to a Debian alternative. Just because of the principle of the thing. Better that than validate the "acquire and destroy" strategy that seems to be used by every big tech company like IBM, Microsoft, Facebook and Google.
• timgarmstrong 6y ago
  If I were running an open source software business, I would simply provide long-term support updates for free and also have lots of money to fund ongoing development.
• wcchandler 6y ago
  I’m on the fence. I work in higher ed and happily pay the premium for red hat. We only have about 500 systems in our top 10 research/health based institution. I’m really tempted to spin up an in-house replacement for CentOS. Not strictly to defer adoption of RHT, but instead to fill the necessary gap for those who have gone “all-in” with CentOS. Those in higher ed have access to all the necessary components required to produce CentOS. All they need is leadership.
• DarkmSparks 6y ago
  At the risk of getting hit with downvotes... because its oracle.. Oracle Linux actually seems to be the best way out (at least for now) /me shudders. Actually just installing it on a new 5900x now after aborting CentOS due to it becoming abandonware and having its name stolen by IBM.
• mekster 6y ago
  It does make sense from RH's perspective that when Fedora is a testing environment for the next major version and RH wants to use CentOS for minor version test environment, so that they can release a new RHEL minor version more confidently to paying customers. I assume CentOS Stream will be based on the previous RHEL minor version release which would be stable and puts improvements for the next minor version release before RHEL releases it which doesn't sound like the end of the world like some people seem to think. You actually get improvements earlier than later and you also get to throw feedbacks in before the next minor version gets released which feels more community oriented. Unless your server needs absolute stability like RHEL (in which case you might as well just pay for RHEL), then it seems ok to use Stream. For those that need absolute stability but have no decent flow of income, then you might be burned but I suppose a new community supported RHEL clone would come out sooner or later.
• sumanthvepa 6y ago
  We use CantOS in production. Our servers are typically replaced once in 3 years. But we update our software stack on bare metal only once in 5 years or so. We however spin up VMs all the time on these servers, and having a single standard operating system base that was extremely stable did not have licensing issues was a positive. This changes the calculus for using RedHat based OSes. So we initiated a migration to Debian.
• oshanz 6y ago
  https://www.change.org/p/centos-governing-board-do-not-destroy-centos-by-using-it-as-a-rhel-upstream https://www.change.org/p/centos-governing-board-do-not-destr...
• dang 6y ago
  There are multiple pages of comments, accessible via the 'More' link at the bottom of the page, or click here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25345428&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25345428&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25345428&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25345428&p=3 (This message will eventually self-destruct.)
• reacharavindh 6y ago
  This is sad. Our research group runs based on RHEL + CentOS. RHEL for all the important stuff, and CentOS for all the compute nodes. Now, if CentOS 8 dies, there is no way we are running say Debain on compute nodes and RHEL on other servers. RedHat sadly has to go away. It's their own way of losing our business, and losing goodwill. Now, the people at university will treat RedHat the same as Oracle and IBM for being greedy and evil. Too bad Scientific Linux was dropped in favour of CentOS. Perhaps scientific community will revive Scientific Linux or something like that. Cant wait for what comes out of this.
• jbotz 6y ago
  I think people are missing something here... this isn't going to make a typical CentOS deployment less stable than before. The intended result is to make RHEL even more stable than before, but leaving CentOS in the position where RHEL was until now. Seriously, think about it. Yes, users of CentOS Stream will be essentially be doing beta-testing for RedHat, but it's a type of beta testing that until now didn't even exist; any instability, conflict, or vulnerability that enters into CentOS Stream is one that would have entered into production RHEL systems otherwise. So the net effect is fewer of those for RHEL, but the same number as before for CentOS. CentOS users lose nothing they ever had.
• wfuser 6y ago
  I don't think this has anything to do with the IBM acquisition of Red Hat, but this is something that's driven by Red Hat's management itself. They did a similar thing with JBoss application server (the community edition) which was extremely popular and used within the community and even in production. Red Hat offered (and still offers) an enteprise version of it (JBoss EAP). Few years back they slowly started diminishing the prominence of the community version. They first renamed it (to WildFly) since the "JBoss" name confuses users with their enterprise edition offering. Then they started adding confusion around usage of the community edition of the server (now named WildFly) and started sending out messages (which never were clarified) that WildFly "cannot" be used in production environments (no explanation of what production environment was). Answers to these questions typically directed users to JBoss EAP (the enterprise edition) where they could enroll in developer programs and use the JBoss EAP for free for development use and then pay for the same when they use that or deploy that in production. This effectively killed the entire JBoss (now WildFly) community (external contributions, user discussions and any such interactions). WildFly these days is just there as a community project for the sake of it. There's no real external involvement in it and it's mostly driven by Red Hat employees and only rarely see any discussion happening in the open in their mailing lists anymore (can't blame them when no one external to their own employed team participates anymore). The thing though is, developers actually involved in this project had strong opposition to the way this was handled, but none of it was heard and the "decision was already done" by people who hardly had any role to play on the day to day community involvement with the project. I am pretty sure it was the same with this CentOS decision.
  • wfuser 6y ago
    There was even a restriction on the community edition to not release bug fix releases (just one was allowed). So if X.0.0 was released then X.0.1, X.0.2 and so on were not allowed. Without these bug fix releases the community versions started seeing X.1.0, X.2.0 and so on which included additional enhancements/features and weren't merely bug fix releases. As a result, the stability that the community edition of the server was known to provide (previously), no longer existed. This all boiled down to one thing - the sales team couldn't convince customers that paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the enterprise edition was a good thing when the community edition was equally good and well maintained, even if by volunteer community members.
• throw7 6y ago
  Well, wasn't this the original worry when centos was "acquired" by redhat many years ago? I suppose a new distro that did what the pre-redhat centos did (source rebuilds of RHEL) is what will happen.
• bickelwilliam 6y ago
  Hmm.. In terms of alternatives, how can we be sure that Ubuntu sponsor Canonical will not get acquired and change the rules of how freely Ubuntu stable versions are available? This whole thing is making me rethink if it makes sense to rely on free unsupported software at the operating system level. I don't trust oracle and cloud linux also seems like a commercial company wanting to profit from Linux like Red Hat. Hmmm...
• tekmonks 6y ago
  We are creating the next RHEL based Enterprise Linux - same as CentOS used to be. Targeted first release is January 31, 2021. Looking for both volunteers or people who want to be paid for their efforts. Join us to secure Enterprise Linux as a free (as in beer and freedom) for the foreseeable future. https://monkos.org https://monkos.org