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Not sure if I agree with the conclusion. maybe this is an issue, maybe times have changed. From my personal experience the 'stable' releases are just to slow to

Not sure if I agree with the conclusion. maybe this is an issue, maybe times have changed. From my personal experience the 'stable' releases are just to slow to keep up with the demands on frequency of updates. To illustrate what I mean, and this is ofcourse very subjective and dependent on my use case etc: I work on and manage hosting for RoR applications. I have a linux laptop I cannot develop on because I cannot install a recent version of ruby. Yes I can compile it manually or whatever, but that defeats the point of having distros etc. On our hosting platform we use AWS linux, which is based of Centos. The latest version of Ruby on AWS linux is 7 years old. Our app probably wouldn't even run on it. So we use containers. Special custom ruby images with recent versions build in a stable debian base. Now I have the problem that a.o nginx and nodejs have no recent versions available; versions that we either need for features or just because random dependecies. So maybe the market for stable == 5+ years behind is simply not that viable anymore. Other distro's fill that demand and now centos can offer a distro for situations where you need a bit more recent versions.

chousuke 6y ago
Not everything chases the latest and greatest though. If you run containers anyway, wouldn't you want the host running those containers to remain stable and predictable? Would you gain value from running your databases on rolling-release distributions? It may be that your application benefits greatly from always running the latest versions of whatever technologies you use, but there are tons of use-cases for a more slow-moving platform as well.
- Quekid5 6y ago
  > If you run containers anyway, wouldn't you want the host running those containers to remain stable and predictable? For this use, I'd say one should use a disto focused only on running containers. Everything else is overkill and subject to "feature" creep on the server. There is also the issue that all the container stuff is still a moving target feature-wise.
webmobdev 6y ago
> From my personal experience the 'stable' releases are just to slow to keep up with the demands on frequency of updates. You are missing the point that it's a desired feature of CentOS distro that is targeted at servers - stability is valued more over running the latest versions of some software that isn't tested over a long period of time and may or may not have bugs. Most people use CentOS in servers because it provided a very easy migration "upgrade" in the future to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (CentOS is a near clone of RHEL, without the Red Hat branding). Now nobody will consider it anymore because the new CentOS is not tested for stability (using tried and tested bug-free softwares) and won't provide an easy migration path to RHEL anymore.
- mhkool 6y ago
  RHEL is used for its stability. I also would like to see more updates. I think it would be better to introduce a RHEL Stream in addition to “basic” RHEL instead of killing CentOS.
Tomte 6y ago
The idea is that the server base is rock-stable, and then you judiciously install newer versions of software that is central to you and your business (or activities). So you would install a newer Ruby, maybe even JRuby?, and a newer Rails, but you're probably not interested in time-consumingly maintaining postfix. Or systemd. Or gcc. Or the GNU userland.
Gravityloss 6y ago
Not saying this fits your problem but JRuby is great, you can just package it with your application and never have to worry about version problems of Ruby anymore. (You do have to have Java, but that's very easy.)
xorcist 6y ago
Building an SRPM is literally only one command.
antihero 6y ago
If you're developing you should really use something like asdf or at the very least RVM. Depending on system packages as a developer seems kind of self-defeating.
yrro 6y ago
> The latest version of Ruby on AWS linux is 7 years old. On RHEL 6 and 7, Software Collections are supposed to help with this: https://developers.redhat.com/products/softwarecollections/hello-world#fndtn-ruby https://developers.redhat.com/products/softwarecollections/h... You can install rh-ruby26 which doesn't sound too bad to me. On RHEL 8 there are modules/appstreams (according to https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/rhel8-app-streams-life-cycle https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/rhel8-app-s..., you can use the ruby 2.7 appstream today which will be maintained until March 2023). Red Hat also produce container images for those who want to go that way. Of course you can use any container image you want... I'm only mentioning this because the ubi8/nginx-118 and ubi8/nodejs-14 container images seem pretty up to date to me... ;)
acdha 6y ago
> On our hosting platform we use AWS linux, which is based of Centos. The latest version of Ruby on AWS linux is 7 years old. Our app probably wouldn't even run on it. Are you using Amazon Linux extras? That’s what I use for current Python releases and it seems to have more recent Ruby versions: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ec2-install-extras-library-software/ https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ec2-i...

chousuke 6y ago

Not everything chases the latest and greatest though. If you run containers anyway, wouldn't you want the host running those containers to remain stable and predictable? Would you gain value from running your databases on rolling-release distributions? It may be that your application benefits greatly from always running the latest versions of whatever technologies you use, but there are tons of use-cases for a more slow-moving platform as well.

Quekid5 6y ago
> If you run containers anyway, wouldn't you want the host running those containers to remain stable and predictable? For this use, I'd say one should use a disto focused only on running containers. Everything else is overkill and subject to "feature" creep on the server. There is also the issue that all the container stuff is still a moving target feature-wise.

webmobdev 6y ago

> From my personal experience the 'stable' releases are just to slow to keep up with the demands on frequency of updates. You are missing the point that it's a desired feature of CentOS distro that is targeted at servers - stability is valued more over running the latest versions of some software that isn't tested over a long period of time and may or may not have bugs. Most people use CentOS in servers because it provided a very easy migration "upgrade" in the future to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (CentOS is a near clone of RHEL, without the Red Hat branding). Now nobody will consider it anymore because the new CentOS is not tested for stability (using tried and tested bug-free softwares) and won't provide an easy migration path to RHEL anymore.

mhkool 6y ago
RHEL is used for its stability. I also would like to see more updates. I think it would be better to introduce a RHEL Stream in addition to “basic” RHEL instead of killing CentOS.

Tomte 6y ago

The idea is that the server base is rock-stable, and then you judiciously install newer versions of software that is central to you and your business (or activities). So you would install a newer Ruby, maybe even JRuby?, and a newer Rails, but you're probably not interested in time-consumingly maintaining postfix. Or systemd. Or gcc. Or the GNU userland.

Gravityloss 6y ago

Not saying this fits your problem but JRuby is great, you can just package it with your application and never have to worry about version problems of Ruby anymore. (You do have to have Java, but that's very easy.)

xorcist 6y ago

Building an SRPM is literally only one command.

antihero 6y ago

If you're developing you should really use something like asdf or at the very least RVM. Depending on system packages as a developer seems kind of self-defeating.

yrro 6y ago

> The latest version of Ruby on AWS linux is 7 years old. On RHEL 6 and 7, Software Collections are supposed to help with this: https://developers.redhat.com/products/softwarecollections/hello-world#fndtn-ruby https://developers.redhat.com/products/softwarecollections/h... You can install rh-ruby26 which doesn't sound too bad to me. On RHEL 8 there are modules/appstreams (according to https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/rhel8-app-streams-life-cycle https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/rhel8-app-s..., you can use the ruby 2.7 appstream today which will be maintained until March 2023). Red Hat also produce container images for those who want to go that way. Of course you can use any container image you want... I'm only mentioning this because the ubi8/nginx-118 and ubi8/nodejs-14 container images seem pretty up to date to me... ;)

acdha 6y ago

> On our hosting platform we use AWS linux, which is based of Centos. The latest version of Ruby on AWS linux is 7 years old. Our app probably wouldn't even run on it. Are you using Amazon Linux extras? That’s what I use for current Python releases and it seems to have more recent Ruby versions: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ec2-install-extras-library-software/ https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ec2-i...