5 ms·

If I understood correctly, CentOS Stream is a beta or a nightly for RedHat now?

falcolas 6y ago
That's how I'm reading it. And it's the exact opposite of what I relied upon CentOS for in the past. In the past, CentOS was what I used when I needed a rock solid OS and software packages that could run for months, if not years, with few manual interventions.
- pak9rabid 6y ago
  Yeah, I myself used CentOS when I needed a 100% binary-compatible version of RHEL for free, without all the horse shit that RHEL forces you into (RHN, etc). Oh well, I guess there's Oracle Unbreakable Linux to fill this gap until something better comes along.
  - pak9rabid 6y ago
    Another possibility for those that are being affected by this: in the past when I had no choice but to use RHEL but didn't have an active RHN subscription, I just removed the RHN yum repos and replaced them with CentOS equivalents and everything worked out just fine. In the event the CentOS repos get pulled, then I imagine one could do the same thing, but with Oracle's repos instead.
    - op00to 6y ago
      And when your company gets audited by Oracle and they find the repos, you’ll have a nice conversation about how you need to buy a bunch of oracle cloud bullshit or else you owe a bunch for support.
  - dralley 6y ago
    RHN is dead as a doornail, for the record. Replaced by RH Subscription Manager
    - nobody9999 6y ago
      “Old RHN was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that RHN was as dead as a doornail.” With apologies to Charles Dickens[0]. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm
nix23 6y ago
You can see it like that, some fedoras (like 34) are going to be RHEL9. CentOS Stream is the beta/testfield for the next (or more then just the next) RHEL point release like from 8.3-8.4 or 8.3-8.5
chousuke 6y ago
As far as I can tell, it's going to be similar to Debian Testing, ie. a rolling-release distribution that will have security support. RHEL point releases will then be snapshots of that rolling release with their own security fixes. I can see the use for such a distribution (run CI against CentOS stream to catch any potential breakage with upcoming RHEL changes) but I think the way they went about making this change is ... unfortunate. EDIT: To expand a bit, things may still turn out positive overall if Rocky Linux succeeds and Red Hat doesn't pull off any other silliness. There's an opportunity here for Red Hat to really open up RHEL development to interested parties via CentOS Stream, and so long as they maintain their commitment to publishing RHEL as free software and don't actively interfere with people building their own RHEL-compatible clones from the point releases, everyone wins in the end.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  It's very different from Debian Testing. The closest comparison is to stable-proposed-updates - any given branch of CentOS Stream is still issuing minor updates for a single CentOS major release. The closest thing to Debian Testing would probably be Fedora, with Debian Unstable being comparable to Fedora Rawhide.
- themew 6y ago
  Unfortunately, Stream is not a rolling release like Arch. You will still be required to perform a full install of Stream 9 when it's released.
  - dralley 6y ago
    That is a very a good thing, not a downside. CentOS Stream is still a decent choice to run a server on (yes, not quite as good as the near-perfect RHEL clone that CentOS currently is), which would definitely not be the case if it was a "true" rolling release distro. To have an Arch-like distro under the CentOS brand would not make any sense.
- 0x0 6y ago
  Debian Testing doesn't really have much in the way of security support, see https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing
djsumdog 6y ago
It seems comparable to openSUSE Leap. openSUSE: Tumbleweed -> Leap -> SLES RedHat: Fedorda -> CentOS Stream -> RHEL
- quantummkv 6y ago
  No. openSUSE Leap is what centos was before. A community version of the enterprise distro. And unlike redhat, suse is actually moving towards converging the leap and enterprise codebases as much as they can in Leap 15.3
  - pnutjam 6y ago
    Yup, the only valid complaint I've seen about OpenSuse is the lower support window, "at least 36 months" for any major release. I think most of the complainers don't realize how easy it is to upgrade OpenSuse compared to CentOS. It's like night and day. SLES also has kernel updates with no reboot and an immutable root version. Basically / is read-only and all patches are applied to a new snapshot that is mounted at next boot.
- dralley 6y ago
  More like Fedora -----------------------------------------------------> CentOS Stream --> RHEL CentOS Stream is at most a couple of months ahead of RHEL, not true for Fedora.
- merb 6y ago
  you can't compare tumbleweed with fedora since fedora has "major releases" and a support window. tumbleweed is basically on the edge (with transactional-update support) i.e. there is no "system upgrade"
dralley 6y ago
CentOS Stream is effectively a rolling beta of minor releases of RHEL. So, not a beta for RHEL 8->9->etc, but a beta for 8.1->8.2->8.3.

That's how I'm reading it. And it's the exact opposite of what I relied upon CentOS for in the past. In the past, CentOS was what I used when I needed a rock solid OS and software packages that could run for months, if not years, with few manual interventions.

pak9rabid 6y ago
Yeah, I myself used CentOS when I needed a 100% binary-compatible version of RHEL for free, without all the horse shit that RHEL forces you into (RHN, etc). Oh well, I guess there's Oracle Unbreakable Linux to fill this gap until something better comes along.
- pak9rabid 6y ago
  Another possibility for those that are being affected by this: in the past when I had no choice but to use RHEL but didn't have an active RHN subscription, I just removed the RHN yum repos and replaced them with CentOS equivalents and everything worked out just fine. In the event the CentOS repos get pulled, then I imagine one could do the same thing, but with Oracle's repos instead.
  - op00to 6y ago
    And when your company gets audited by Oracle and they find the repos, you’ll have a nice conversation about how you need to buy a bunch of oracle cloud bullshit or else you owe a bunch for support.
- dralley 6y ago
  RHN is dead as a doornail, for the record. Replaced by RH Subscription Manager
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    “Old RHN was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that RHN was as dead as a doornail.” With apologies to Charles Dickens[0]. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm

nix23 6y ago

You can see it like that, some fedoras (like 34) are going to be RHEL9. CentOS Stream is the beta/testfield for the next (or more then just the next) RHEL point release like from 8.3-8.4 or 8.3-8.5

chousuke 6y ago

As far as I can tell, it's going to be similar to Debian Testing, ie. a rolling-release distribution that will have security support. RHEL point releases will then be snapshots of that rolling release with their own security fixes. I can see the use for such a distribution (run CI against CentOS stream to catch any potential breakage with upcoming RHEL changes) but I think the way they went about making this change is ... unfortunate. EDIT: To expand a bit, things may still turn out positive overall if Rocky Linux succeeds and Red Hat doesn't pull off any other silliness. There's an opportunity here for Red Hat to really open up RHEL development to interested parties via CentOS Stream, and so long as they maintain their commitment to publishing RHEL as free software and don't actively interfere with people building their own RHEL-compatible clones from the point releases, everyone wins in the end.

zozbot234 6y ago
It's very different from Debian Testing. The closest comparison is to stable-proposed-updates - any given branch of CentOS Stream is still issuing minor updates for a single CentOS major release. The closest thing to Debian Testing would probably be Fedora, with Debian Unstable being comparable to Fedora Rawhide.
themew 6y ago
Unfortunately, Stream is not a rolling release like Arch. You will still be required to perform a full install of Stream 9 when it's released.
- dralley 6y ago
  That is a very a good thing, not a downside. CentOS Stream is still a decent choice to run a server on (yes, not quite as good as the near-perfect RHEL clone that CentOS currently is), which would definitely not be the case if it was a "true" rolling release distro. To have an Arch-like distro under the CentOS brand would not make any sense.
0x0 6y ago
Debian Testing doesn't really have much in the way of security support, see https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing

djsumdog 6y ago

It seems comparable to openSUSE Leap. openSUSE: Tumbleweed -> Leap -> SLES RedHat: Fedorda -> CentOS Stream -> RHEL

quantummkv 6y ago
No. openSUSE Leap is what centos was before. A community version of the enterprise distro. And unlike redhat, suse is actually moving towards converging the leap and enterprise codebases as much as they can in Leap 15.3
- pnutjam 6y ago
  Yup, the only valid complaint I've seen about OpenSuse is the lower support window, "at least 36 months" for any major release. I think most of the complainers don't realize how easy it is to upgrade OpenSuse compared to CentOS. It's like night and day. SLES also has kernel updates with no reboot and an immutable root version. Basically / is read-only and all patches are applied to a new snapshot that is mounted at next boot.
dralley 6y ago
More like Fedora -----------------------------------------------------> CentOS Stream --> RHEL CentOS Stream is at most a couple of months ahead of RHEL, not true for Fedora.
merb 6y ago
you can't compare tumbleweed with fedora since fedora has "major releases" and a support window. tumbleweed is basically on the edge (with transactional-update support) i.e. there is no "system upgrade"

dralley 6y ago

CentOS Stream is effectively a rolling beta of minor releases of RHEL. So, not a beta for RHEL 8->9->etc, but a beta for 8.1->8.2->8.3.