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So Red Hat is promising a possible migration path for CentOS 8 users to some limited, restricted form of RHEL next year, but not announcing it yet? So they depr
by awill 6y ago
So Red Hat is promising a possible migration path for CentOS 8 users to some limited, restricted form of RHEL next year, but not announcing it yet? So they deprecate a product, and expect people to wait for an announcement that may or may not work for them? Who is making these decisions???
Why on earth not announce the free RHEL offering now. Or wait until those details are ready to deprecate CentOS 8.
It sounds like some CentOS users might be able to migrate to some free version of RHEL, but it's unclear how restricted that free version will be. Probably good for home users, but how about medium or large businesses? And then, why should anyone even use a restricted RHEL when Rocky will be full RHEL for free.
- tyingq 6y ago"Red hat leadership" I imagine it's IBM leadership that decided this one. "It's unclear how restricted that free version will be" Probably not directly restricted. Just restricted in the sense that it won't be an LTS type distribution that matches RHEL's LTS product, package versions, etc. That was the value prop for CentOS.
- IntelMiner 6y agoDidn't IBM put Red Hat in the CEO chair some time ago after the acquisition?
- tyingq 6y agoNo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Krishna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Krishna
- rwmj 6y agoFormer Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst became IBM's president.
- goneri 6y agoYes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Whitehurst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Whitehurst (not CEO but President)
- captn3m0 6y agoThis is the CoreOS migration story, all over again.
- 0xbadcafebee 6y ago"When CentOS 8 reaches its end-of-life, Red Hat will become something of an outlier among commercial Linux server developers, as the only one not making free version of their product available to users. Ubuntu Server is free for users to download and use, and a drop-in replacement for SUSE is available in a downstream community distribution, openSUSE Leap." Sounds like a great opportunity for Ubuntu and SuSE to pick up market share as the CentOS replacement.
- hertzrat 6y agoIt could be good for Debian too
- UMetaGOMS 6y agoPeople I'm dealing with seem to be concerned that Canonical/SUSE might pull the same stunt. Personally I think the backlash RH have created is enough to discourage either company from following this path.
- kergonath 6y agoTo me, OpenSuSE is a perfect balance between the fad-chasing Ubuntu and the glacial CentOS (well, the glacial RHEL now). It’s stable, does not break nearly as easily as Ubuntu, but is still more current than RH. I hope they manage to get some users from this fiasco.
- GordonS 6y agoAside from the pace of updates, are there any meaningful differences that new OpenSUSE users should be aware of? (I figured I'd switch from CentOS to Ubuntu, but I hadn't considered OpenSUSE).
- kergonath 6y agoCompared to CentOS, it is really easy to use common desktop environments. I can’t say about very niche ones, but I use XFCE, which works well out of the box. YaST is the convenient GUI where settings and some common tools are located. It is more than adequate: not perfect but much better than a myriad of small setup programs or the abomination that is whatever Windows does. The package manager (zypper in the command-line, or a YaST module for the GUI) is a bit different but not revolutionary and still RPM-based. Compared to Ubuntu, it tends to be more conservative and better tested on server or workstation hardware. What finally drove me away from Ubuntu was a very painful episode when the SAS driver would freeze randomly about 4 times out of 10 when loading. It is also far less opinionated than Canonical regarding which desktop you should use. The main drawback is that OpenSUSE Leap is supported for 2 years, so no equivalent to Ubuntu’s LTS releases. OpenSUSE also uses systemd, but this should not be a shock for someone coming from Red Hat. It works decently with nVidia’s proprietary driver. Well, as decently as this garbage can run, anyway. I haven’t tested Wayland, as AFAIK XFCE still requires X.
- _jal 6y agoI think it is deliberate. This is IBM signaling that the good-ole' days are in the past. If you want to run RH stuff, they will get their pound of flesh. If you're not paying, you are not something they're concerned with. When the corporate tone projected externally changes, that usually signals more than just a product change.
- arbitrage 6y agoThis matches up with other such drastic changes in IBM's portfolio of offerings. They're turning the screws on all their customers.
- pixl97 6y ago"Never go full Oracle"
- fmajid 6y agoNever go any Oracle
- apple4ever 6y agoI hope that doesn't portend anything bad for Ansible...
- warrenm 6y agoAs soon as IBM announced they were buying Red Hat I knew two things: 1. Red Hat was no longer the "go to" platform for anything 2. IBM was absolutely desperate
- CoolGuySteve 6y agoI actually don't understand the purpose of CentOS if Red Hat owns it. My understanding is that CentOS is mostly RHEL with the all trademarks replaced. So if that's the case, what's the difference between a free RHEL without a commercial support contract/license and CentOS other than Red Hat not having to maintain those IP-related changes for CentOS? The alternative scenario that most people seem to be assuming, where there will be no free RHEL or RHEL-like OS, seems impossible to me as somebody somewhere will just recompile RHEL source and release it under a new name just like CentOS did before. And of course Red Hat knows this.
- UMetaGOMS 6y agoPeople keep saying this all over these threads, and I can't grasp why. The difference is that a free RHEL without support doesn't exist, while CentOS does. You can get RHEL for free through various developer focused programs, but that is most certainly not the same as having an unencumbered ISO available for unlimited downloads with no EULA or sign-in requirement.
- CoolGuySteve 6y agoI'm saying either it will exist and come from Red Hat or somebody else will make it. It's inevitable. But economically speaking, it's cheaper for Red Hat to not pointlessly rebrand their own product. CentOS as a Red Hat-owned brand is stupid.
- UMetaGOMS 6y agoThere is no evidence that RHEL will be releasing a free version to replace CentOS, and the fact that others will take over a replacement OS development is already known. My comment was focused on the confusion/exasperation at why people keep implying this is no problem, because we can just use RHEL for free, as that is not true.
- GordonS 6y agoI think you're missing the point. Nobody would argue that CentOS doesn't make sense - the argument is that it doesn't make sense if RHEL owns it, as there is a clear conflict of interest.