6 ms·

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 da

by 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.
    - busterarm 6y ago
      Because some important vendors don't target Debian whereas they do target Ubuntu. Canonical and RedHat are paying the salaries of the people steering the direction of Linux as a whole. They're forcing you to choose between the two.
      - pnutjam 6y ago
        Your forgetting Suse, I'll bet they take a big chunk of the customer base. OpenSuse LEAP is now identical to SLES and it can be converted easily if you want support.
        apecat 6y ago
        But LEAP is only supported for 36 months? https://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime https://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime That's pretty weak sauce even compared to the five years Debian and Ubuntu offer. And Debian actually supports all their packages, unlike Ubuntu which tricks people into installing unpatched garbage from 'universe'
        pnutjam 6y ago
        Supported for "at least" 36 months. You can get extended support and it's usually quiet a bit more.
        apecat 6y ago
        Do you know what kind of price range would that be?
        pnutjam 6y ago
  - jmnicolas 6y ago
    Yes clearly: we use CentOS at work because it's free (as in beer). If I go to my boss to ask money for a RedHat license he would laugh me out of his office.
  - Yeroc 6y ago
    This. We run CentOS for non-critical stuff and RHEL for stuff that really needs support. If we need to switch off CentOS we certainly won't be using RHEL either. Doesn't make sense to be running a Debian flavour mixed with RHEL since the two a significantly different.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Just wait when Mark Shuttleworth decides not to sponsor the project any longer. Ubuntu followed Red-Hat's footsteps away from desktop into the server room, as there is no money to be done there, and it will follow it still, if there is still not enough money on the server.
- silly-silly 6y ago
  Just so we're clear, you don't want updates ?
briffle 6y ago
Its time for a new internet rule. If Oracle or IBM buys your vendor, you should be migrating.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- NDizzle 6y ago
  Sad, but accurate.
- dylan604 6y ago
  That's almost true for any project getting acquired. The big EvilCorp will always have it's overbearing corporatey corporateness crush the things that made the project so cool it attracted their attention to it. There are very few projects that actually improved from being acquired.
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  Should probably add Salesforce to that list too. They’re basically the new Oracle.
  - macintux 6y ago
    And CA, where software goes to die.
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    Serious question: are they? I know they've made a lot of acquisitions over the years, but I don't recall any widely-circulated stories of "Salesforce takes beloved thing and destroys it". The major open-source-friendly company I know of that Salesforce bought was Heroku, and a lot of people seem to use Heroku without even knowing that they are owned by Salesforce (and have been since 2010). It seems like it's too early to say anything definitive about what their purchase of Slack is going to change, although Slack has been making itself quite enterprise-focused all on its own.
- whatsmyusername 6y ago
space_ghost 6y ago
FreeBSD is starting to look really good.
- Shared404 6y ago
  I agree. I've been seeing more and more about the BSD's online recently, and to be quite honest, I'm happy about that. Just installed OpenBSD for the first time the other day, and am loving it.
  - liv-io 6y ago
    This might help you on your start: https://github.com/liv-io/ansible-roles-bsd https://github.com/liv-io/ansible-roles-bsd
    - Shared404 6y ago
      Looks like a nice resource, many thanks!
- apecat 6y ago
  I would agree that BSD systems are nicer to look at, and FreeBSD supporting major releases for five years, with forcing people to install point releases once a year is really quite nice. But I don't see BSD becoming practical as a platform to run (commercial enterprise) Linux software, when it's already a pain to get packages and support for anything that's not RHEL/CentOS.
  - toast0 6y ago
    It's not ideal, but you can run Linux software on FreeBSD. Commercial enterprise tends to be conservative and not need bleeding edge Linux interfaces that may not be available through the linux emulation layer yet.
- bluedino 6y ago
  What are the usual roadblocks for people?
chr15p 6y ago
> Red Hat bought CentOS, presumably with real $$$, if I remember right technically centos didn't really exist as an entity that could be bought, Red Hat just hired all the developers (there were only ever 3-4 people working on centos). I would guess they are now working on Centos Streams, or have moved on to other things entirely. Its not like Centos has been killed off either, so it didn't cost a lot and this wont really save anything, it's "just" a change of focus. Microsoft buying ubuntu would be an interesting (and not impossible) move though.

by em500 6y ago

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.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    Because some important vendors don't target Debian whereas they do target Ubuntu. Canonical and RedHat are paying the salaries of the people steering the direction of Linux as a whole. They're forcing you to choose between the two.
    - pnutjam 6y ago
      Your forgetting Suse, I'll bet they take a big chunk of the customer base. OpenSuse LEAP is now identical to SLES and it can be converted easily if you want support.
      - apecat 6y ago
        But LEAP is only supported for 36 months? https://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime https://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime That's pretty weak sauce even compared to the five years Debian and Ubuntu offer. And Debian actually supports all their packages, unlike Ubuntu which tricks people into installing unpatched garbage from 'universe'
        pnutjam 6y ago
        Supported for "at least" 36 months. You can get extended support and it's usually quiet a bit more.
        apecat 6y ago
        Do you know what kind of price range would that be?
        pnutjam 6y ago
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  Yes clearly: we use CentOS at work because it's free (as in beer). If I go to my boss to ask money for a RedHat license he would laugh me out of his office.
- Yeroc 6y ago
  This. We run CentOS for non-critical stuff and RHEL for stuff that really needs support. If we need to switch off CentOS we certainly won't be using RHEL either. Doesn't make sense to be running a Debian flavour mixed with RHEL since the two a significantly different.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Just wait when Mark Shuttleworth decides not to sponsor the project any longer. Ubuntu followed Red-Hat's footsteps away from desktop into the server room, as there is no money to be done there, and it will follow it still, if there is still not enough money on the server.
silly-silly 6y ago
Just so we're clear, you don't want updates ?

briffle 6y ago

Its time for a new internet rule. If Oracle or IBM buys your vendor, you should be migrating.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NDizzle 6y ago
Sad, but accurate.
dylan604 6y ago
That's almost true for any project getting acquired. The big EvilCorp will always have it's overbearing corporatey corporateness crush the things that made the project so cool it attracted their attention to it. There are very few projects that actually improved from being acquired.
wayoutthere 6y ago
Should probably add Salesforce to that list too. They’re basically the new Oracle.
- macintux 6y ago
  And CA, where software goes to die.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  Serious question: are they? I know they've made a lot of acquisitions over the years, but I don't recall any widely-circulated stories of "Salesforce takes beloved thing and destroys it". The major open-source-friendly company I know of that Salesforce bought was Heroku, and a lot of people seem to use Heroku without even knowing that they are owned by Salesforce (and have been since 2010). It seems like it's too early to say anything definitive about what their purchase of Slack is going to change, although Slack has been making itself quite enterprise-focused all on its own.
whatsmyusername 6y ago

space_ghost 6y ago

FreeBSD is starting to look really good.

Shared404 6y ago
I agree. I've been seeing more and more about the BSD's online recently, and to be quite honest, I'm happy about that. Just installed OpenBSD for the first time the other day, and am loving it.
- liv-io 6y ago
  This might help you on your start: https://github.com/liv-io/ansible-roles-bsd https://github.com/liv-io/ansible-roles-bsd
  - Shared404 6y ago
    Looks like a nice resource, many thanks!
apecat 6y ago
I would agree that BSD systems are nicer to look at, and FreeBSD supporting major releases for five years, with forcing people to install point releases once a year is really quite nice. But I don't see BSD becoming practical as a platform to run (commercial enterprise) Linux software, when it's already a pain to get packages and support for anything that's not RHEL/CentOS.
- toast0 6y ago
  It's not ideal, but you can run Linux software on FreeBSD. Commercial enterprise tends to be conservative and not need bleeding edge Linux interfaces that may not be available through the linux emulation layer yet.
bluedino 6y ago
What are the usual roadblocks for people?

chr15p 6y ago

> Red Hat bought CentOS, presumably with real $$$, if I remember right technically centos didn't really exist as an entity that could be bought, Red Hat just hired all the developers (there were only ever 3-4 people working on centos). I would guess they are now working on Centos Streams, or have moved on to other things entirely. Its not like Centos has been killed off either, so it didn't cost a lot and this wont really save anything, it's "just" a change of focus. Microsoft buying ubuntu would be an interesting (and not impossible) move though.