20 ms·
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 Ce
by 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 agoThe 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 agoYep, that's exactly what I did.
- apecat 6y agoWonder 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.
- posix_me_less 6y agoThat would be cool "stick it to the man" trick, but how do we organize?
- apecat 6y agoWell, GoDaddy, or heh, AWS are The Man. My best hope is that the major hosting vendors, or maybe some industry consortium might offer resources for this.
- syshum 6y agoAWS already has their on RHEL Clone, Amazon Linux, for use on AWS
- apecat 6y ago@syshum, yes, but it's not exacly RHEL, and it's not distributed outside AWS https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25347232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25347232 But the point is indeed that there are resources and infrastructure, so one might be hopeful that there will be a good outcome. One possible outcome would be increased demand and resources for Debian and/or Ubuntu and I definitely wouldn't mind that (five years of support isn't all that much in IT). Realistically though, a lot of people need RHEL for free and I suspect there will be a way.
- posix_me_less 6y agoYeah, resources and infrastrucure are not some magic that only Redhat can provide. If sources will be released on https://git.centos.org/ https://git.centos.org/ or somewhere else, then it may work. Just like the old times [1] [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/128952/ https://lwn.net/Articles/128952/
- InvaderFizz 6y ago> @syshum, yes, but it's not exacly RHEL, and it's not distributed outside AWS On the first point you are correct. It's not exactly RHEL7. On the second point, Amazon provides images for running on prem[0]. We run a lot of dev AmazonLinux2 VMs on prem so that the local computing environment matches the deployed EC2 environment. 0: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/amazon-linux-2-virtual-machine.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/amazon-l...
- jmnicolas 6y agoYes this hurts. My use case is specific: I'm a dev but since we're 2 in the IT service with barely any budget I'm also a (modest) sysadmin and they also call me when the printer or the TV doesn't work. So a few years ago when Debian decided to have faster release cycles I migrated all my VM to CentOS: once the OS is installed I don't want to think about it for the next 10 years. I still didn't finish my Windows 7 to 10 on all my desktops, I'm swamped with users wanting to do Zoom / Teams / Skype / Whatever visio conferences, I have 3 new dev projects for 2021 and now I have to migrate all my CentOS VM... Yeah, thank you RedHat I won't forget / forgive that.
- ossusermivami 6y agonothing is really free in this word! I think rollling your own distro is the only way to truly be free!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mmcgrath1 6y agoBefore giving up on us just yet, I'd encourage you to check out our developer program for proper RHEL that's free. And I'd stay tuned for announcements that are coming in the first half of 2021 (as mentioned in our FAQ). You might find we've got a program for you: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q10 https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q10
- bluedino 6y ago>> Imagine if you were running a business, and deployed CentOS 8 Sadly, the danger of running on free software. Even more sadly, this puts a bad taste in peoples mouths, making them hesitant to start new projects on free software.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago... as opposed to paid/proprietary software, that never breaks compatibility, hikes prices, or screws over their customers?
- kcb 6y agoAt least they don't advertise a support period then cut it 8 years short.
- symlinkk 6y agoYou’re conflating “free software” with “community support”. It’s possible to run free software with a paid support contract backed by a corporation - thats what RHEL offers, and Ubuntu with their Ubuntu Advantage program. CentOS offered free software, but with unpaid community support, which isn’t guaranteed at all as there’s no contract. This is an unpopular opinion but this is why I prefer Ubuntu over Debian - there’s a corporation on the other end that’s being paid to update software, and if you choose, you can always upgrade to paid support that is backed by a legally binding contract.
- timgarmstrong 6y agoIf you're using open source software and not paying anyone, sometimes shit happens and you will be surprised or disappointed and have no recourse. Even if everyone starts off with the best of intentions. We could debate forever about whether fault lies with projects overpromising, or users having unrealistic expectations, or whatever else, but I don't think that changes the situation. If you have are paying someone for the software/support, shit still happens, but you have a relationship and ways to get recourse.
- Qerub 6y ago> It's proof of the downsides to the IBM acquisition, [...] I think the movement to this outcome already started in January 2014 with this event: https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-incorporates-free-red-hat-clone-centos/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-incorporates-free-red-...
- Jimmc414 6y ago>> Imagine if you were running a business, and deployed CentOS 8 based on the 10 year lifespan promise. You're totally screwed now, and Red Hat knows it. The hypothetical you posed is the actual situation, I am now learning, I have apparently forced on my team. We've ramped up labor 3x revenue preparing product launch in 90 - 180 days. We created an image containing centos 8 , Java , postgres and tomcat a year ago and that what is deployed to beta clients and what we've been testing. What's ironic is that I sort of went out on a limb with my team by forcing us to go with Linux over Windows and the way I allayed concerns was to ask them to just "wait and see" in hopes that the performance differential would make it a moot point. edit: after a little thought it seems that moving to RHEL might cost us the least amount of money and downtime. Still sucks and not what we need to be working on right now.
- vbezhenar 6y agoConsider downgrading to CentOS 7. It should work for 4 more years.
- p49k 6y agoRunning modern versions of software on CentOS 7 can be a giant pain due to the old version of glibc that’s baked in.
- vbezhenar 6y agoJava and Postgres will work.
- nix23 6y agoI go and drink some Corretto :)
- AshamedCaptain 6y agoI was supporting CentOS 6 until about a couple weeks ago.
- qz2 6y agoYeah we have some now ageing CentOS 7 crap to clear up. The obvious choice was CentOS 8 but that is now uncertain. I’m glad I was too busy to take this on earlier in the year.
- pinewurst 6y agoWhere's the evidence that this is IBM driven?
- bonzini 6y agoThere's none. Hanlon's razor applies, and I say that as a Red Hat employee.
- arbitrage 6y agoRunning a business on a free product. That you knew RedHat acqui-hired. That you knew they had a history of using products such as to wedge people into a paying bracket. Cry me a river.
- moocowtruck 6y agodid you pay for a support contract for centOS ? or is this something free you expected to be some contractual thing?
- zamalek 6y ago> For my server I want a boring, stable OS, so I'm definitely not using Streams. Have you considered Ubuntu Server? "Being boring" and "having no vision" are frequent critiques of Ubuntu, which(as we probably all know) can be the highest possible compliment in some scenarios, like servers. They also have pretty decent LTS.
- leetrout 6y agoDebian has entered the chat
- joana035 6y agoBringing in place upgrades between major versions, something that CentOS never had.
- jnwatson 6y agoDunno. I just spent an hour trying to figure out how to set the DNS server on an interface on Ubuntu Server 20.04. There's no ifconfig, /etc/resolv.conf is out, no nslookup, /etc/network/interfaces is completely out. It is like a completely new OS to me, and I've been hacking on UNIXes for 25 years now.
- severino 6y agoI'm not sure the things you find missing are Ubuntu's fault. For example, while it's true that there is no ifconfig by default in Ubuntu (it's provided by a package called net-tools), one can read this: > In 2009, Red Hat decided to deprecate ifconfig as the default command line network interface management utility, because the “net-tools” package (which provides ifconfig) did not support InfiniBand addresses (commonly used interconnect in high-performance computing applications). So, many of the things that make Ubuntu look like a new OS to you, were actually decisions made by RedHat years ago, and they will also be present in newer RHEL versions.
- joana035 6y agoThat is a great opportunity to switch to Debian, which can be upgraded in place between major versions and, by being completely community driven, does not suffer from this kind of surprises.
- yrro 6y agoIf only it had comprehensive SELinux support...
- joana035 6y agoThere is AppArmor (enabled by default) which is another Linux Security Module. I find it easier to configure than SELinux.
- yrro 6y agoLast time I checked, nothing was actually confined by AppArmor out of the box (IIRC I was looking at the output of ps -eZ and found that AppArmor wasn't actaully protecting anything...) Specifically in RHEL/CentOS/Fedora I like that everything in the base system is reasonably well confined out of the box - including random container images that users insist on downloading/running. I don't know if AppArmor is even capable of doing this: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/selinux_users_and_administrators_guide/chap-security-enhanced_linux-svirt https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterp... i.e., if I 'docker run --rm -it debian:unstable sleep 300' twice, then: $ pgrep sleep | xargs ps -Z LABEL PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND system_u:system_r:svirt_lxc_net_t:s0:c563,c603 1595289 pts/0 S+ 0:00 sleep 123 system_u:system_r:svirt_lxc_net_t:s0:c25,c163 1595325 pts/0 S+ 0:00 sleep 345 Both containers are confined by the svirt_lxc_net_t domain, but since they have different labels, they aren't able to interfere with each other, or the host system, even if the process inside the container is running as uid 0.
- INTPenis 6y agoI did try to deploy CentOS 8 on several occasions during 2020 but mostly found it was not ready for what I needed to do. So I defaulted back to CentOS 7. Which I now realize was lucky.
- plaur782 6y agoAn interesting take on the impact of this change: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1336603153341550592.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1336603153341550592.html
- redhat_a 6y agoYou're absolutely right. You should definitely demand a full refund on all the money you've paid for CentOS!
- honestduane 6y agoTry Rocky Linux. Its the new Fork of Redhat from all of this.