34 ms·

Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

833 points by andyjpb 6y ago

soperj 6y ago
This is the best case scenario here.
mmrezaie 6y ago
I am really interested to know why should anyone go with this when Debian or Ubuntu LTS exist. The two later have not changed their policies in the last decade, and they have a clear path for upgrading. CentOS was always a clear choice for device drivers support, but I never understood the stability claims.
- mmrezaie 6y ago
  By understanding the stability I mean the other two are as stable as far as I have experienced them in the last decade.
  - em500 6y ago
    To system administrators and people managing large fleets of servers "stability" usually means "doesn't change much" rather than "doesn't crash". In that sense, RHEL tended to be more stable than Debian / Ubuntu. Though that may change somewhat with Ubuntu's recent 10 year LTS plans.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  Agreed. I've used and advocated for RHEL/CentOS at work since version 5 because it was stable and predictible. That's gone now, and many of my users would prefer Ubuntu anwyay because it's what they use on their personal machines. So I'm making plans to move all our compute resources to Ubuntu LTS.
  - effie 6y ago
    I'm wary of doing that, because in near future, Microsoft is likely to take over Canonical. You don't put all eggs into one basket. Always plan for escape, always have a plan B. Preferably one not relying on crystal-balling whims of a for-profit corporation. Rocky Linux, Alpine Linux, Debian, Gentoo, BSD, etc.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Moving a server from Ubuntu to Debian doesn't seem a very arduous task? I've got a box in a rack that came from the factory with Ubuntu installed, but there are Debian addresses in /etc/apt/sources.list.d Besides isn't that pretty much the exemplar of FUD?
      - effie 6y ago
        But it is still a task, isn't it? So, now you move to Ubuntu, then if things get south, you move to Debian. Or, you could move to Debian or other less risky distribution now and likely save some time and energy. On the other hand, maybe Ubuntu is providing something special that Debian can't do - then it may make sense to go with Ubuntu and maybe even swallow Microsoft's fishing hook if it comes.
    - curt15 6y ago
      >Microsoft is likely to take over Canonical. This is not the first time I've seen this prediction. What is its basis?
      - type0 6y ago
        there has been some collaboration between the two, however MS collaborates with other small companies and that speculation never arises. I wouldn't set a bet that they're uninterested in Canonical, but the desire to buy it has always been overstretched, it is much bigger chance that they buy some other specialized distro vendor instead (like Google buying Neverware). Ubuntu is too generic in that sense.
      - 6y ago
- dharmab 6y ago
  Debian's package policies can be challenging for rapidly updating packages: https://lwn.net/Articles/835599/ https://lwn.net/Articles/835599/
  - jcastro 6y ago
    Both Debian and CentOS have the same problem here, you're not going to install kubernetes from a default repo on any traditional distro.
  - mmrezaie 6y ago
    For packages like Kubernetes or big data packages one should not use anyone else's builds. I have been finding problems in Cray's modules and eventually we are using our own builds we can reproducibly support using Spack.
    - symlinkk 6y ago
      I would say for any piece of software, if the vendor themselves provide a package for your distro, use that, not the distro version. In fact I’ll go a step further and say Windows and macOS got this right, in that third party developers should do the work to “package” their apps. It would be insane for Microsoft to maintain packages for every piece of software that ships on Windows, but somehow that’s the situation we’re in with Linux. Hopefully Snap or Flatpak changes this!
      - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        > It would be insane for Microsoft to maintain packages for every piece of software that ships on Windows, but somehow that’s the situation we’re in with Linux. And this is why installing ex. Filezilla on Linux is safe and easy, and doing the same on Windows is neither.
- hitpointdrew 6y ago
  I am simply not a fan of Debian/Ubuntu's utilities, with the big one being the package manager (I like yum/dnf way better), but also other things like ufw vs firewalld.
  - tijuco2 6y ago
    same here
- tmoravec 6y ago
  Debian offers around three years of support. Ubuntu LTS around five. Both pale in comparison with Red Hat and, by proxy, CentOS.
  - mmrezaie 6y ago
    Honestly that support is meaningless for some areas I know. In our Data Center we have hit problems with old packages and at the end you will end up with a lot of your own packages. In the end I find Debian to be a good base, and you build the rest by yourself. Even though I use Fedora for Desktop, I always have a feeling Debian is the server choice which I can extend further.
  - joana035 6y ago
    Right, but the price one pays are outdated packages. CentOS 8 was released few days ago with kernel 4.18, which not even LTS is, and is older than the current Debian stable kernel(!). If you need to install anything besides the base distro you need elrepo, epel, etc which I'm not sure can be counted as part of the support.
    - citiguy 6y ago
      Agreed, the packages in Centos / RHEL are all super old. The RHEL license structure changes all the time and depending on which one you get it may or may not include the extended repos.
    - CoolGuySteve 6y ago
      The patch delta for security fixes must get larger over time as these packages age further and further away from top of tree. I always wonder how many major vulnerabilities are introduced into these super old distros due to backporting bugs.
      - jtl999 6y ago
        Documented cases don't seem to be common, but what comes to mind is the Debian "weak keys" scandal (2008), and the VLC "libeml" vulnerability (2019)[1] [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/ch86o6/vlc_security_issue/ https://old.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/ch86o6/vlc_security...
- citiguy 6y ago
  Lately it seems to me Debian and Ubuntu have made some strange package decisions. They have morphed into a desktop oriented build with snap packages and auto-updates enabled by default (among other strange decisions). There's a ton of stuff we always end up disabling in the new release because it's super buggy and doesn't work well (I work at a small MSP). I'm not sure who replaced Ian Jackson, but Debian seems rudderless. Centos was the rational other free choice, not that Red Hat hasn't made other equally strange decisions. Sometimes I think we'd be better off rolling our own, like Amazon does.
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    I'm using Debian and I don't use snap packages. I guess it's optional? I just installed Minimal and installed few packages I needed.
  - sjellis 6y ago
    Snap is an Ubuntu thing. It's basically a client for the Canonical app store.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Even on ubuntu, you don't have to use it. I don't.
      - type0 6y ago
        That's the only sane way to use Ubuntu. Snap is abomination
    - sliken 6y ago
      Snap is proprietary and has a fairly broken implementation. Seems impressively good at preventing machines from booting, polluting the filesystem namespace (who wants 100 lines in every df?), doesn't seem to handle versioning or garbage collection well. Server side isn't open, and Canocial repeatedly claims wide industry support ... despite not having it. I recommend the first step in any Ubuntu system you use is to disable snap. Use something portable like flatpak that does at least have some support, is open source, and seems to have a healthy eco system.
- shawnz 6y ago
  You may need to develop or test software for RHEL and CentOS/Rocky are bug-for-bug compatible.
- loop0 6y ago
  Because CentOS on enterprise hardware is way more stable than Debian. I've worked for 6 years as a sysadmin for 300+ servers and we migrated everything from Debian to CentOS and our hardware related issues just went away. Overall we had much less trouble in our systems.
  - pak9rabid 6y ago
    That's probably because lots of enterprise hardware is only ever tested and certified to work with RHEL, and in many cases only provided drivers in an RPM format that's intended to be installed in a RHEL-like environment.
    - nycticorax 6y ago
      Which is a good reason someone might choose a RHELish distro over Debian, no?
- paul_f 6y ago
  If you're using Cpanel, you have no choice but to use Redhat, CentOS or Fedora.
  - syshum 6y ago
    That is changing, they are going to Support CloudLinux, and Ubuntu now https://blog.cpanel.com/centos-8-end-of-life-announcement/ https://blog.cpanel.com/centos-8-end-of-life-announcement/
    - paul_f 6y ago
      Glad to see, but worry that Cpanel on Ubuntu coming in late 2021, corresponding to the end of CentOS 8, is cutting it close.
- theevilsharpie 6y ago
  > I am really interested to know why should anyone go with this when Debian or Ubuntu LTS exist. There is a large world of proprietary enterprise software that is tested, developed, and supported solely on RHEL. CentOS (and theoretically, Rocky Linux) can run these applications because they are essentially a reskin of RHEL. Debian and Ubuntu LTS cannot (or at least not in a supported state) because they are not RHEL.
- itsjustjoe 6y ago
  rpm. If your systems are built around rpm already that alone is a good enough reason.
- jpalomaki 6y ago
  Not an expert, but I’ve understood CentOS was interesting for people who run RedHat for production, but want something free for non-prod hosts.
  - dmix 6y ago
    For me it's always been about stability and the long term support of a 'free' distribution. That has also historically been their bread and butter which got them wide-adoption. The branding stuff was a plus to the sys-admins and Linux die hards.
  - davoneus 6y ago
    This. We used CentOS as dev environments, and RHEL as production. It gave us the best of both worlds; an unsupported but compatible and stable dev environment we could bring up and throw away as much as we wanted _Without_ licensing BS. And when the devs were happy with it, the move of a project to RHEL was easy and uneventful. And don't even get me started on the 'free' dev version of RHEL. It's a PITA to use, we've tried. It's also why we've halted our RH purchasing for the moment. Sure, it's caused our RHEL reps no end of consternation and stress but too bad. I've been honest with them, and told them that they are probably lying through their teeth (without knowing it) when they parrot the line that RH will have some magic answer for "expanded" and/or "reduced cost" Streams usage in "1st half of 21". That trust died when RH management axed CentOS8 like they did.
- viraptor 6y ago
  Apart from the long support, RHEL based distros also give you built in selinux support. Apparmor exists, but it's not comparable in features and existing policies.
  - throwaway092835 6y ago
    selinux is provided by Debian as well and it's hardly a popular (or very useful) feature compared to daemon and application sandboxing.
    - viraptor 6y ago
      The module itself is provided, yes. The policies are not really integrated into Debian systems. You can adjust them to work, but it's way more work than using ready ones on a RHEL-like system.
- pak9rabid 6y ago
  Drivers for hardware that were only ever intended to work with RHEL (EMC's PowerPath drivers, for example).
- tw04 6y ago
  Rocky is going to be exactly what CentOS was: a free version of RHEL. The reason you would use this vs. Debian or Ubuntu is because you've got systems that need to mirror your production, but you don't want/need enterprise support on them. When I worked for a hardware vendor we had customers who ran hundreds of CentOS boxes in dev/test alongside their production RHEL boxes. If there was an issue with a driver, we simply asked that they reproduce it on RHEL (which was easy to do). If they had been running debian or ubuntu LTS the answer would have been: I suggest you reach out the development mailing list and seek out support there. Whether you like it or not, most hardware vendors want/require you to have an enterprise support contract on your OS in order to help with driver issues.
- ernst_klim 6y ago
  > when Debian or Ubuntu LTS exist I'm not familiar with Debian, do they have same infrastructure and documentation quality as RHEL? For example do they have anything like Koji [1] for easy automated package building? [1] https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/ https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/
- area51org 6y ago
  Debian/Ubuntu are great. However, there are people and companies that prefer the Red Hat way. That's also great.
- StillBored 6y ago
  RHEL and its derivatives are the only linux distribution which maintains binary compatibility over 10+ years while getting not only security updates but feature additions when possible. This is something I don't think the wider community understands, nor do they understand the incredible amount of work it takes to back-port major kernel/etc features while maintaining a stable kernel ABI as well as userspace ABI. Every single other distribution stops providing feature updates within a year or two. So LTS, really means "old with a few security updates" while RHEL means, will run efficiently on your hardware (including newer than the distro) with the same binary drivers and packages from 3rd party sources for the entire lifespan. AKA, its more a windows model than a traditional linux distro in that it allows hardware vendors to ship binary drivers, and software vendors to ship binary packages. That is a huge part of why its the most commonly supported distro for engineering tool chains, and a long list of other commercial hardware and software.
  - acdha 6y ago
    That's the value pitch for RHEL, where it's understandable — whether or not you like the enterprise IT model of avoiding upgrades as long as possible, there's a ton of money in it. I think the gap is the question of how many people there are who want enterprise-style lifetimes but don't actually want support. If you're running servers which don't need a paid support contract, upgrading Debian every 5 years is hardly a significant burden (and balanced by not having to routinely backport packages). There's some benefit to, say, being able to develop skills an employer is looking for but that's not a huge pool of users. I think this is the reason behind the present situation: CentOS' main appeal was to people who don't want to pay for RHEL, and not enough of those people contribute to support a community. That lead to the sale to Red Hat in the first place and it's unclear to me that anyone else could be more successful with the same pitch.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      >who want enterprise-style lifetimes but don't actually want support But lifetimes are support. Support isn't just, or even primarily, about making a phone call and saying "Help, it's broken." After all, there's nothing keeping someone from taking a snapshot of a codebase and running it unchanged for 10 years. Probably not a good idea if you're connected to the network, but certainly possible.
- Shorel 6y ago
  Switching distributions is an uphill fight when the company has used a version of RedHat for 20 years. Most developers use Ubuntu in their laptops. Virtualized on Windows, but Ubuntu nonetheless.
murat124 6y ago
What is the vision for Rocky Linux? A solid, stable, and transparent alternative for production environments, developed by the community for the community. Hence the name Rocky Linux, I suppose? Solid as a rock. Although I'll be inclined to think of it as series of movies. Perhaps even split wood before installing Rocky 5?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Darmody 6y ago
  "Thinking back to early CentOS days... My cofounder was Rocky McGaugh. He is no longer with us, so as a H/T to him, who never got to see the success that CentOS came to be, I introduce to you...Rocky Linux" — Gregory Kurtzer, Founder
  - deelowe 6y ago
    This project just oozes good-heartedness. I wish him all the best.
    - joana035 6y ago
      I wish all the best for Rocky Linux, it is Linux after all. Is always good to have diversity and a community driven project.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    What is an "H/T"?
    - Darmody 6y ago
      Hat tip.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  I think of Rocky the moose from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Not a confidence-inspiring name. Edit: actually Rocky was the flying squirrel.
hitpointdrew 6y ago
Welp...that didn't take long. I expected something like this would happen in light of the recent changes over at CentOS.
- macintux 6y ago
  Took even less time than you think. I remember the original Rocky announcement was the same day (or maybe next) as IBM's.
- dboreham 6y ago
  More like some contract clause expired, triggering both events.
AntiImperialist 6y ago
I doubt how successful this will turn out to be because of the following reasons: - The old CentOS had a brand value, which Rocky Linux has to earn back all over again. - The old Red Hat was nice to CentOS or at least wasn't particularly hostile. That does not mean IBM will be nice too. - It may be too short a notice for current CentOS users to wait for Rocky Linux to come through. They may already move away to other alternatives like Debian or Ubuntu or Amazon Linux or whatever fits their use case. - If because of some miracle, Rocky Linux turns out to be just as successful as CentOS, there is a chance that either Red Hat or a competitor will end up taking control of it too. Corporate sponsorship is too lucrative to decline. So, it will end up with the same fate as CentOS.
- albru123 6y ago
  I don't see how it would be too short a notice for current CentOS users really. At least for majority of users running CentOS in their production systems and relying on a long-term support. It's not like they just go and trash their production setup the very moment its running distro lifespan is shortened. I'd expect the opposite actually, since you're looking for something well supported.
  - houseofzeus 6y ago
    Agree, I'd imagine most of them are also still on 7, which the lifecycle didn't change for and goes to 2024 even if they just stay where they are.
- kubanczyk 6y ago
  > So, it will end up with the same fate as CentOS. Same fate as CentOS, let me think... Can I replace a few system packages to convert it to a binary-compatible, patchable, community-supported distro, just differently branded? Okay, count me in.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  CentOS had no "brand value" when it was new. Red Hat was not nice to CentOS when it was new. The "same fate" as CentOS would mean surviving for 16 years.
tcldr 6y ago
Rocky makes me think ‘unstable’ and ‘uncertain’ which seems at odds with the stated vision of the distribution. Might make for a tough sell.
- dfdz 6y ago
  I got the same impression. Do you think it would be too late to change the name to "Rock Linux" or "Rock Solid Linux"? Since branding is so important this really seems like something that should go through focus groups or crowd sources somehow? Maybe a poll on hacker news? Unfortunately, I really think changing the name would be critical to the success of the project. Imagine you are a technical lead and you have to convince your boss to switch from RHEL to Rocky Linux... Edit: I know the name is in tribute to Rocky McGaugh, but I still think "Rock Solid Linux" "named in tribute to CentOs co-founder Rocky McGaugh" would make the project more successful
  - dimitrios1 6y ago
    Given we are talking of branding, did you both completely miss the logo? To me it's clear the name is in reference to mountains, as in the Rocky Mountains.
    - tcldr 6y ago
      No, I didn’t – and neither will many others! That’s the point. It’s a great tribute to one of the late Cent OS founders, but it comes with unfortunate marketing hurdles.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    One disadvantage of "Rock Solid Linux" is that it shortens poorly. I think "Rock Solid" or "RSL" would be ambiguous. On the other hand I think "Rocky" sounds nice and unique (at least in this space). Also I feel naming it "Rock Solid Linux" would be a bit gaudy or arrogant.
  - cat199 6y ago
    there was a now-defunct 'rock linux' already: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=rock https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=rock
nasalgoat 6y ago
The branding here I think is a big issue. The name "Rocky Linux" sounds too homebrew and unprofessional. CentOS sounds Enterprise-ish. I find it hard to believe any corporate client would take it seriously.
- 1-6 6y ago
  You can get far with bad branding. Case: Ubuntu
  - tokai 6y ago
    or java
  - jolmg 6y ago
    Why is Ubuntu bad branding? Seems short, memorable, good meaning, original, etc.
    - colesantiago 6y ago
      the naming makes it sound like unstable version of linux.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - joana035 6y ago
        Ubuntu is a Nguni Bantu term meaning "humanity". It is often translated as "I am because we are", or "humanity towards others", or in Zulu "umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" or in Xhosa, "umntu ngumntu ngabantu" but is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity" Taken from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_philosophy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_philosophy But yes, Ubuntu is based on Debian's Unstable branch.
        jolmg 6y ago
bserge 6y ago
Great, another Linux distro... I am trying to use something, but I just can't. Spending my time fixing problems instead of doing actual work is fun, for a while. Every damn time I start this one laptop with Linux, trying to get away from Windows 10, there's something to fix. Oh, the undervolt is not being applied, time to build the whole thing again. Oh, restart causes it to wank the hard drive indefinitely for some reason. Oh, shutdown is still not working, glad I got a power button. Nouveau glitches. Bluetooth has disconnected and just refuses to work again. Audio recording is not working again. Video encoding is not working again. Video playback is not working again... And it runs so well in a virtual machine. Why can't people just band together and create one good Linux distro for the desktop. Rhetorical question, I guess.
- joana035 6y ago
  Because of hardware manufacturers, closed/proprietary firmwares, Microsoft standards...
- xrisk 6y ago
  This… is not the place to rant about Linux? Desktop compatibility is not the goal of CentOS style distros.
- reggegg 6y ago
  Fortunately this is a server distro, and there definitely aren't enough of those around (stable trustworthy ones). While your experiences with the desktop are unfortunate, on most common laptops (cheap and expensive ones) most Linux distros run well, even if some very specific devices have issues with the kernel drivers
- orev 6y ago
  This distro is meant for servers, or maybe long term stable desktops you’d want in a classroom or something like that. People running servers don’t need any of the stuff you mentioned.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    CentOS was free RHEL. RHEL is not intrinsically a "server" OS. I developed on a RHEL workstation at my previous job. I'm not sure where the idea that CentOS is for servers came from.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nps1 6y ago
The next CentOS will be where the core developers who are actually contributing to project will move. However, branding does matter if you want enterprise following. Rocky does sound unprofessional.
- sp332 6y ago
  Good. That means it's less likely to sell out to some suit farm and get cancelled like CentOS did.
  - effie 6y ago
    > suit farm I love new language gems. Thanks!
- bonzini 6y ago
  Core developers and infrastructure is moving to CentOS Stream. However the software that is running on said infrastructure is all open source.
  - nps1 6y ago
    That is concerning. How is Oracle Linux compared to Rocky Linux. Why not people use Oracle Linux which is a decent company backed product.
    - Tom4hawk 6y ago
      Product might be decent but Oracle is far from being decent.
29athrowaway 6y ago
This project name makes me feel better than "Debian". Debian = Deb + Ian. Ian Murdoch broke up with Deb, and later he hanged himself.
hnarn 6y ago
The fact that a majority of the comments are whining about the name really shows you the worst part about open source: the non-contributing but highly entitled part of the community. If you don’t like the name, launch your own CentOS replacement. There’s no better time than now. If there’s one thing this project does not need right now, it’s armchair marketing experts. If you do care about a viable CentOS replacement, do something. Contribute code, money or expertise. The last thing any new and vulnerable project needs is another “idea guy” or a new logo.
- jeremymcanally 6y ago
  “The loudest mouths are often attached to the idlest hands.” - ancient open source software proverb (It’s not ancient. I made it up. But it’s sadly true.)
  - goodpoint 6y ago
    It's very true and for a basic reason - one minute spent doing is one minute taken away from talking/writing. This is the reason why many excellent projects remain obscure while marketing-driven products become famous... and often take credit for other people's ideas.
- nps1 6y ago
  Or it just means the name does matter to vast user community. And you are hell bent on not listening to user community and not taking valid criticism.
  - dvt 6y ago
    No, @hnarn is right. And you don't really "get" this until you start maintaining an OSS repo (I speak from experience). For years, I was very critical of Linus Torvalds and his brusque attitude. Then I started a few moderately-popular OSS projects, and the entitled masses started pouring in. After a while, it's hard to refrain from telling people to just screw off.
  - macksd 6y ago
geraldcombs 6y ago
Setting up shop under a new name can be stomach-churningly daunting. Best of luck to Gregory and the rest of the team.
anonymousiam 6y ago
I have not seen much mention of alternatives to RHEL besides Oracle Linux. Another excellent alternative exists here: https://scientificlinux.org/ https://scientificlinux.org/
- kbenson 6y ago
  Scientific Linux/Fermilab did not release a version 8, and instead opted to install CentOS 8 on their clusters instead of roll their own version.[1] 1: https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-ANNOUNCE;11d6001.1904 https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX...
  - joana035 6y ago
    I hope they make a comeback or join Rocky efforts
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    There is also Springdale Linux
    - em500 6y ago
      Did you actually check if they have a maintained 8 release out there? AFAICT they have not released anything after 8.1 more than a year ago.
electrotype 6y ago
Someone care to explain why did CentOS switch from downstream to upstream builds? I guess there is a reason.
- gvb 6y ago
  Money. RHEL requires expensive licenses. CentOS was RHEL without the RedHat branding and without the expensive licensing. By design, there was a nearly complete overlap between RHEL and CentOS. By "repurposing" CentOS into a "rolling release", RedHat (IBM) has broken the overlap so CentOS (free licensing) no longer competes directly against RHEL (expensive licensing).
  - Spivak 6y ago
    This is so misinformed it's funny. CentOS and RHEL will now be down to the compiler flags compatible since RHEL minor releases will now just be point-in-time forks of CentOS with security fixes and backports from, you guessed it, CentOS.
    - gvb 6y ago
      CentOS and RHEL will only be exactly the same at the moment when RHEL is a point-in-time fork of CentOS. As soon ad RHEL forks from CentOS, CentOS will roll forward and will no longer be exactly the same as RHEL. Previously, CentOS was a rebuild of RHEL. In between RHEL releases, CentOS was exactly the same as RHEL. When RHEL had a release/fix/backpoint, CentOS trailed until it was rebuilt from the new RHEL source. The "old" CentOS was exactly the same nearly always (nearly perfect overlap) and the "new" CentOS is exactly the same nearly never (almost no overlap).
      - Spivak 6y ago
        You act like RHEL 7.1 is a fixed artifact — it’s constantly receiving updates, security patches, and backports. And CentOS always trails behind on those updates so it’s never exactly the same as RHEL either. This change makes CentOS so much closer to RHEL that it’s weird that people are acting like the opposite is happening.
kondbg 6y ago
Devil's advocate: why should I choose this yet-to-exist distribution over something already existing, such as Oracle Linux? The most common argument (Oracle is evil and litigious. Therefore, using Oracle Linux will result in me being sued) honestly seems like FUD. All RHEL downstream distributions rebuild the same SRPMs that RHEL provides. Doing a quick comparison over some common packages (kernel, httpd, openssl, etc.) between CentOS 8.3 (https://vault.centos.org/8.3.2011/BaseOS/Source/SPackages/ https://vault.centos.org/8.3.2011/BaseOS/Source/SPackages/) Oracle Linux 8.3 (https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL8/baseos/latest/x86_64/index_src.html https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL8/baseos/latest/x8...) shows that they are indeed byte identical (with the exception of certain spec files including debranding patches). What is the value of having a separate RHEL derivative? It isn't as if the "community" can propose/submit any changes, since any changes will cease to make the downstream distribution a "bug for bug" compatible RHEL derivative. If I actually wanted to participate in the larger RHEL-derivative community, I would need to actually submit my changes to the CentOS stream project.
- haolez 6y ago
  Oracle Linux might change the rules in the future. It kind of just happened with CentOS :)
  - ajsfoux234 6y ago
    Well, the same thing might happen with Rocky Linux as well :)
    - hnarn 6y ago
      “Anything can happen” is not an argument. It’s about quantified risk.
      - emayljames 6y ago
        Yes, and the 2 parties have very different motivates.
    - 6y ago
based2 6y ago
https://rocksdb.org/ https://rocksdb.org/ from fb
tux 6y ago
I think the name and the logo is good. Don't listen to the people who just keep talking and not helping! Good to see that CentOS cofonder picked this up and now became a founder of Rocky Linux. This shows dedication and rock solid background. Rocky Linux will be a project to follow, help and use in production environment. Thank you for all your hard work!
- p1necone 6y ago
  People complaining about the name to the extent that they are is such an extreme example of bikeshedding.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- Keverw 6y ago
  Reminds me about how people don't even give CockroachDB a chance because of it's name. Every time it's mentioned on HN, people can't help but to bring up it's name.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    Same happens with GIMP, it’s just not smart marketing.
    - znpy 6y ago
      in GIMP's defense, GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, whereas names as Red Hat, Ubuntu and many others are not acronyms
      - asddubs 6y ago
        to be fair to red hat and ubuntu, those names don't have multiple inappropriate meanings
e40 6y ago
Anyone believe that I will, at some point, be able to point my CentOS 8.x configuration at the Rocky Linux repo and just upgrade to it? That would be ideal. I realized GPG keys will need to be replaced, etc.
- Shared404 6y ago
  I seem to remember seeing somewhere that that was the plan. How accurate that is, I don't know.
- marcolussetti 6y ago
  I would imagine that to be the future state. Other RHEL-compatible distros offer it, I believe.
- freiheit 6y ago
  Worst case is might have to also manually replace a few "release" and "logos" packages (which is what's involved now for switching from RHEL to CentOS or OracleLinux)... More likely there'll be a simple script to swap from CentOS (or RHEL) to Rocky.. Or they could have a "rocky-release" package with `Obsoletes: centos-release, redhat-release` and a `yum install https://rockylinux.org/rocky-release-8.2-1.noarch.rpm https://rockylinux.org/rocky-release-8.2-1.noarch.rpm ; yum upgrade` is all that'd be required to swap... TL;DR: should be very easy, but there's minor variations in methods that I doubt are finalized.
- mroche 6y ago
  It is a planned feature, yes.
  - antihero 6y ago
    Hopefully one available by Dec 31, 2021!
- strzibny 6y ago
  I think so. Oracle Linux is the same kind of clone and does exactly that[0]. [0] https://nts.strzibny.name/migrating-centos-to-oracle-linux/ https://nts.strzibny.name/migrating-centos-to-oracle-linux/
igotroot 6y ago
Looking forward to give this a spin at home to see if it'll be the future of non-RH based linux servers, although it'll take a long time before people are willing to throw it in prod like they do with CentOS. No way to change that except time. Also it's interesting that some people defined Rocky as being 'unstable' when others read it as being 'solid as a rock'.
- basilgohar 6y ago
  But it is a RH-based – it's just like CentOS used to be. It's just not owned nor operated by RH.
mongol 6y ago
I have not used CentOS but I have considered it. If OpenSUSE did not exist, that is probably what I would use. Or perhaps now, Rocky Linux
CivBase 6y ago
I knew what CentOS was, but never followed it because I've never personally had use for it. Still, I appreciate what it did and was glad to have it as an option should I ever need a super stable distro in the future. That said, I think the FAQ is missing an answer for a critical question: What ultimately drove CentOS to its regrettable fate and what will Rocky Linux do to avoid a similar misfortune?
- teknopaul 6y ago
  IBM. Rocky will not be be IBM.
  - CivBase 6y ago
    I don't think CentOS ever intended to be IBM either.
    - flatline 6y ago
      I always thought it was more than a little incestuous for RH to acquire and maintain the RH clone, but it did fill a niche.
      - rnd0 6y ago
        Centos was broke. Otherwise it's doubtful that they would have sold to Redhat.
  - nickysielicki 6y ago
    The most frustrating thing about this is that Redhat was making a profit before IBM bought them. They had existed for 20 some years on a business model that business people didn’t understand, and they were able to do that because they understood what open source would become and how they could play a role in that. One of the things that YC is always talking about is that founders looking for ideas should look to identify situations where most people think it’s going to turn out one way, but most people are wrong and it’s actually going to turn out another way. In the context of the late 90s, where virtually all software was proprietary, they bet on open source software and support plans, and made a sustainable company on it. They contributed to open source so that they would have the expertise, gave all the software away for free, and then sold the expertise through support plans. And then the business people came along and they’re showing a deep misunderstanding of why Redhat was able to sell support plans in the first place. People on RHEL are going to stay on RHEL, but people on CentOS — the market of people who are not paying customers but could theoretically become customers, are almost certainly going to go to Canonical. This will kill Redhat.
CoconutPilot 6y ago
Whats missing is an analysis of why CentOS failed. I think Rocky Linux needs to put out a plan how they will make themselves financially viable as we've had 3 high profile RHEL respins go down in the last 10 years. CentOS failed twice, it ran out of money in 2014 and was rescued back then by Redhat sponsership. Again in 2020. Another widely used RHEL respin was Scientific Linux which mothballed when RHEL 7 was released. There seems to be lots of potential users but not lots of potential money for a RHEL respin.
- fierarul 6y ago
  It's not really surprising that a project that companies use since they don't want to pay RedHat licenses will not get any money at all...
- pinewurst 6y ago
  It’s hard to continually fund any project defined by its users’ abhorrence of compensation.
  - cpncrunch 6y ago
    I think Ubuntu has a decent business plan, charging people $225/yr to extend support from 5 to 10 years. I would happily pay that in order to avoid having to migrate as often. CentOS just gave everything away for free and then is wondering why they're not making any money.
    - loeg 6y ago
      RHEL has a business model too.
      - cpncrunch 6y ago
        Yes, indeed, but I was referring to Centos. There isn't enough of a benefit for most of us to upgrade if we get security updates free for 10 years and don't need support.
Alupis 6y ago
> The CentOS project recently announced a shift in strategy for CentOS. Whereas previously CentOS existed as a downstream build of its upstream vendor (it receives patches and updates after the upstream vendor does), it will be shifting to an upstream build (testing patches and updates before inclusion in the upstream vendor. Wow, I haven't been following this very closely - but isn't that Fedora they're describing? At least... traditionally... Fedora was upstream, RHEL was stabalized in the middle, and CentOS was downstream - regarding patch releases and features, etc. Is Fedora going away too?
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  Fedora is desktop-focused. RHEL and CentOS are server-focused. I think there is a place for both. But who knows, maybe IBM will discontinue one, or both.
  - LinuxBender 6y ago
    RHEL and CentOS are both server and desktop. The desktop is just not flashy or shiny or bleeding edge. The default install is/was Gnome 3 shell (For RHEL7 and CentOS 7). I am not sure if this is still the case, but Redhat used to require 100% of its employees to use RHEL Workstation as the desktop.
    - doublepg23 6y ago
      I know a sales guy who had a choice of Windows or Mac, I think engineers use Linux.
      - LinuxBender 6y ago
        That's good to hear. I felt kindof bad for the receptionist being forced to use RHEL. This was during RHEL3 and the desktop was not great.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  > Is Fedora going away too? Nope. - Fedora is cutting edge/desktop. - CentOS Stream is testing/RC area for RHEL patches. - RHEL is the stable server for enterprise. This is what I understood from a reply to another comment of me in a similar thread.
charliebrownau 6y ago
Maybe its finally time to walk away from Cloud Centralisation Corporations and invest time, money and energy into a different Linix eco system
nycticorax 6y ago
Does anyone know what exactly what were the legal/financial mechanics of RedHat 'absorbing' CentOS in the first place? Is "CentOS" a trademark? Is the CentOS logo trademarked? Who exactly owned the servers that CentOS was distributed from? Did CentOS have people on the payroll who took jobs at RedHat? (Did CentOS have a payroll in the first place?)
- qiqitori 6y ago
  They bought the trademark. From https://www.centos.org/legal/trademarks/ https://www.centos.org/legal/trademarks/ > The CentOS Marks are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. (“Red Hat”). Most servers that distribute current binary RPMs are mirrors operated by third parties. You can be reasonably certain that servers like www.centos.org, mirror.centos.org, vault.centos.org, or buildlogs.centos.org are paid for by Red Hat. Their IPs are mostly AWS. https://www.redhat.com/ja/about/press-releases/red-hat-and-centos-join-forces https://www.redhat.com/ja/about/press-releases/red-hat-and-c...
optimalsolver 6y ago
I hate the name.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  To be fair, CentOS isn't a great name, and neither is 'Red Hat'. 'Rocky Linux' isn't too bad actually.
  - thebigspacefuck 6y ago
    I think they should have named it PennyOS, but that’s just my 2 cents.
    - rnd0 6y ago
      Rocky was the co-founder of CentOS. Who's Penny?
macspoofing 6y ago
What's the point of keeping the CentOS brand at this point? Why not have RHEL and RHEL Stream?
- smitty1110 6y ago
  Because there is still a chance they can extract value from it, or up-sell someone from CentOS to RHEL and a juicy support contract. And they will keep it a round to keep the trademark, if for no other reason than to deny it from everyone else.
technick 6y ago
I feel like the future solution should be a dig at IBM for being a evil company and RH for selling out.
cdnsteve 6y ago
Thank you!
tubularhells 6y ago
I'm so glad I build all my servers on Debian.
- fb03 6y ago
  Me too. but unfortunately, not all 'corporate' software runs or finds all the libs on Debian based distros.. which sucks I know, because I too find this whole 'corporate blessed linux' thingy really unproductive. I work on servers used in VFX rendering pipelines and some software will simply refuse to properly run if I don't give it at least a CentOS. And if I do manage to get it running on Debian/Ubuntu, automatically I'm voiding the company's support because I'm using an 'unsupported Linux distribution'. sux.
  - mroche 6y ago
    Hello fellow VFX/Anim admin! And yeah, even though we have the platform agnostic VFX Reference Platform, pretty much everything in this industry revolves around RHEL/CentOS. Except SideFX, they are a golden exception, and explicitly support non-Red Hat family distributions.
    - gonewest 6y ago
      For those not familiar with the visual effects platform: https://vfxplatform.com/ https://vfxplatform.com/
deleted 6y ago
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musicale 6y ago
> Additionally, support for CentOS Linux 8 has been cut short, from May 31, 2029 to December 31, 2021. That has to be disappointing for the people who adopted CentOS for its stability and long-term support.
commandertso 6y ago
One thing to consider, for the folks that assume everyone on CentOS is a parasite allergic to paying for software... CentOS is heavily used in the HPC academic organizations, in part because paying licensing fees for an OS on 2k+ nodes isn’t workable in academia.
- playcache 6y ago
  Don't they use scientific linux (CentOS clone?)
  - toyg 6y ago
    SL died some time ago.
  - cbmuser 6y ago
    Scientific Linux has been abandoned in favor of CentOS.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Scientific was discontinued and the sponsoring organisations switched to CentOS 8. It looks like the work involved in rebuilding RHEL 8 was too much to deal with.
- fifnir 6y ago
  Indeed we're running CentOS on the cluster at work. I always wondered, why not Debian ?
  - corty 6y ago
    Support. Commercial software packages that you may want to run often come with a list of supported operating systems which usually only includes RedHat and maybe SuSE. Ubuntu and Debian are rarely officially supported. And although you usually can get things to work somehow, your application software support will be useless because all tickets get closed with "unsupported OS, use RedHat". With CentOS you at least might have a chance to get a non-useless answer from you application's support team.
matt-attack 6y ago
Can someone explain why it’s not exceedingly simple to clone the existing Centos concept? Isn’t all the code that does the builds, artwork replacement, etc all open source? I would think that rebranding CentOS as Rocky is a rather trivial process of replatforming all the codebase and replacing any “Centos” with “Rocky”.
- jlgaddis 6y ago
  No kidding, right!? I mean, if you think about it, all that's really needed is for a "s/CentOS/Rocky/g" over all of the repositories. Then, the other 99% of the project is just waiting for the packages to rebuild and get sync'd on all of the mirrors that they could just will into existence with their minds. Really, though, let's be honest here: If they weren't spending so much time writing up press releases and commenting on issues on GitHub, they probably could've already basically been done, the new package repositories could've been published and mirrored, and half of the CentOS 8 boxes out there could've already been migrated over. <sigh> -- EDIT: To be clear, I am not serious. I thought the question I was replying to was completely f##king absurd but chose to respond with sarcasm (it seemed less likely to result in a warning from @dang than my initial reply).
  - 8draco8 6y ago
    But seriously, can somebody ELI5 this project. If Centos is just 1:1 RHEL with removed branding then what new bugs will show up in Centos that are result of that rebranding and will not be fixed by RHEL devs? Is there a code in RHEL that is also copy writed which had to replaced and maintained by Centos devs? What am I missing?
    - slipheen 6y ago
      I'm not fully versed on all the things that would be needed, but at the bare minimum it would seem like you would need a bunch of automated processes for just the building - Import src packages, making sure that you copy in changes/patches when RHEL does. - Replace the RH trademarks in every package - Build every package and run verification tests for each arch - Build ISOs You would also need I said if infrastructure servers that can scale to a large number of users for Yum/RPMs, etc. Then you also need a set of servers for issue tracking and a way to break it out per package. I wouldn't imagine that it is anything which can't be done, it just seems like there's a lot of little pieces that you would need to set up, and infrastructure you need to run.
Ice_cream_suit 6y ago
There is going to be a rocky road ahead... Why not just Rock Linux ? If you want corporate customers, use a corporate name. To those who disagree, would you be comfortable telling your board of directors that you use "insert offensive word" Linux ?
arvindamirtaa 6y ago
Do we know what kind of work is required and what are the kind of contributors they're looking for? Happy to help wherever I can.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  cf. https://wiki.rockylinux.org/contributing https://wiki.rockylinux.org/contributing
arvindamirtaa 6y ago
While it's really sad that CentOS 8 will meet it's end so soon, for those who are on CentOS 7, the planned EOL is still 2024. And if that applies to you, that's plenty of time for Rocky Linux to get rolling. Just a thought.
johnx123-up 6y ago
OT: What is the origin of RockyText font in https://rockylinux.org/ https://rockylinux.org/ ?
- gtirloni 6y ago
  https://github.com/rocky-linux/rocky-fonts https://github.com/rocky-linux/rocky-fonts
homerhomer 6y ago
Just Linux doing what Linux does.
tannhaeuser 6y ago
I wish RL all the best, but I'm glad I switched to debian-stable for server workloads (mostly Docker anyway). If anything, the story of CentOS (and White Box Linux before that) tells me a RedHat clone isn't a feasible project economically in the long run. So it may be better to put your money where your mouth is. Of my customers, none had used CentOS/RH as base image for Docker builds anyway.
strzibny 6y ago
What I missed in the announcements of CentOS news and the obvious disappointment is the talk about whether Stream is actually a path you can take forward. I put together what we actually know about the CentOS -> Stream migration so far[0]. I personally might give stream a chance although if Rocky is released, I imagine it a no-brainer. [0] https://nts.strzibny.name/migrating-centos-to-centos-stream-8/ https://nts.strzibny.name/migrating-centos-to-centos-stream-...
deleted 6y ago
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833 points by andyjpb 6y ago

This is the best case scenario here.

I am really interested to know why should anyone go with this when Debian or Ubuntu LTS exist. The two later have not changed their policies in the last decade, and they have a clear path for upgrading. CentOS was always a clear choice for device drivers support, but I never understood the stability claims.

mmrezaie 6y ago
By understanding the stability I mean the other two are as stable as far as I have experienced them in the last decade.
- em500 6y ago
  To system administrators and people managing large fleets of servers "stability" usually means "doesn't change much" rather than "doesn't crash". In that sense, RHEL tended to be more stable than Debian / Ubuntu. Though that may change somewhat with Ubuntu's recent 10 year LTS plans.
deleted 6y ago
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throwaway201103 6y ago
Agreed. I've used and advocated for RHEL/CentOS at work since version 5 because it was stable and predictible. That's gone now, and many of my users would prefer Ubuntu anwyay because it's what they use on their personal machines. So I'm making plans to move all our compute resources to Ubuntu LTS.
- effie 6y ago
  I'm wary of doing that, because in near future, Microsoft is likely to take over Canonical. You don't put all eggs into one basket. Always plan for escape, always have a plan B. Preferably one not relying on crystal-balling whims of a for-profit corporation. Rocky Linux, Alpine Linux, Debian, Gentoo, BSD, etc.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Moving a server from Ubuntu to Debian doesn't seem a very arduous task? I've got a box in a rack that came from the factory with Ubuntu installed, but there are Debian addresses in /etc/apt/sources.list.d Besides isn't that pretty much the exemplar of FUD?
    - effie 6y ago
      But it is still a task, isn't it? So, now you move to Ubuntu, then if things get south, you move to Debian. Or, you could move to Debian or other less risky distribution now and likely save some time and energy. On the other hand, maybe Ubuntu is providing something special that Debian can't do - then it may make sense to go with Ubuntu and maybe even swallow Microsoft's fishing hook if it comes.
  - curt15 6y ago
    >Microsoft is likely to take over Canonical. This is not the first time I've seen this prediction. What is its basis?
    - type0 6y ago
      there has been some collaboration between the two, however MS collaborates with other small companies and that speculation never arises. I wouldn't set a bet that they're uninterested in Canonical, but the desire to buy it has always been overstretched, it is much bigger chance that they buy some other specialized distro vendor instead (like Google buying Neverware). Ubuntu is too generic in that sense.
    - 6y ago
dharmab 6y ago
Debian's package policies can be challenging for rapidly updating packages: https://lwn.net/Articles/835599/ https://lwn.net/Articles/835599/
- jcastro 6y ago
  Both Debian and CentOS have the same problem here, you're not going to install kubernetes from a default repo on any traditional distro.
- mmrezaie 6y ago
  For packages like Kubernetes or big data packages one should not use anyone else's builds. I have been finding problems in Cray's modules and eventually we are using our own builds we can reproducibly support using Spack.
  - symlinkk 6y ago
    I would say for any piece of software, if the vendor themselves provide a package for your distro, use that, not the distro version. In fact I’ll go a step further and say Windows and macOS got this right, in that third party developers should do the work to “package” their apps. It would be insane for Microsoft to maintain packages for every piece of software that ships on Windows, but somehow that’s the situation we’re in with Linux. Hopefully Snap or Flatpak changes this!
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      > It would be insane for Microsoft to maintain packages for every piece of software that ships on Windows, but somehow that’s the situation we’re in with Linux. And this is why installing ex. Filezilla on Linux is safe and easy, and doing the same on Windows is neither.
hitpointdrew 6y ago
I am simply not a fan of Debian/Ubuntu's utilities, with the big one being the package manager (I like yum/dnf way better), but also other things like ufw vs firewalld.
- tijuco2 6y ago
  same here
tmoravec 6y ago
Debian offers around three years of support. Ubuntu LTS around five. Both pale in comparison with Red Hat and, by proxy, CentOS.
- mmrezaie 6y ago
  Honestly that support is meaningless for some areas I know. In our Data Center we have hit problems with old packages and at the end you will end up with a lot of your own packages. In the end I find Debian to be a good base, and you build the rest by yourself. Even though I use Fedora for Desktop, I always have a feeling Debian is the server choice which I can extend further.
- joana035 6y ago
  Right, but the price one pays are outdated packages. CentOS 8 was released few days ago with kernel 4.18, which not even LTS is, and is older than the current Debian stable kernel(!). If you need to install anything besides the base distro you need elrepo, epel, etc which I'm not sure can be counted as part of the support.
  - citiguy 6y ago
    Agreed, the packages in Centos / RHEL are all super old. The RHEL license structure changes all the time and depending on which one you get it may or may not include the extended repos.
  - CoolGuySteve 6y ago
    The patch delta for security fixes must get larger over time as these packages age further and further away from top of tree. I always wonder how many major vulnerabilities are introduced into these super old distros due to backporting bugs.
    - jtl999 6y ago
      Documented cases don't seem to be common, but what comes to mind is the Debian "weak keys" scandal (2008), and the VLC "libeml" vulnerability (2019)[1] [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/ch86o6/vlc_security_issue/ https://old.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/ch86o6/vlc_security...
citiguy 6y ago
Lately it seems to me Debian and Ubuntu have made some strange package decisions. They have morphed into a desktop oriented build with snap packages and auto-updates enabled by default (among other strange decisions). There's a ton of stuff we always end up disabling in the new release because it's super buggy and doesn't work well (I work at a small MSP). I'm not sure who replaced Ian Jackson, but Debian seems rudderless. Centos was the rational other free choice, not that Red Hat hasn't made other equally strange decisions. Sometimes I think we'd be better off rolling our own, like Amazon does.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  I'm using Debian and I don't use snap packages. I guess it's optional? I just installed Minimal and installed few packages I needed.
- sjellis 6y ago
  Snap is an Ubuntu thing. It's basically a client for the Canonical app store.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Even on ubuntu, you don't have to use it. I don't.
    - type0 6y ago
      That's the only sane way to use Ubuntu. Snap is abomination
  - sliken 6y ago
    Snap is proprietary and has a fairly broken implementation. Seems impressively good at preventing machines from booting, polluting the filesystem namespace (who wants 100 lines in every df?), doesn't seem to handle versioning or garbage collection well. Server side isn't open, and Canocial repeatedly claims wide industry support ... despite not having it. I recommend the first step in any Ubuntu system you use is to disable snap. Use something portable like flatpak that does at least have some support, is open source, and seems to have a healthy eco system.
shawnz 6y ago
You may need to develop or test software for RHEL and CentOS/Rocky are bug-for-bug compatible.
loop0 6y ago
Because CentOS on enterprise hardware is way more stable than Debian. I've worked for 6 years as a sysadmin for 300+ servers and we migrated everything from Debian to CentOS and our hardware related issues just went away. Overall we had much less trouble in our systems.
- pak9rabid 6y ago
  That's probably because lots of enterprise hardware is only ever tested and certified to work with RHEL, and in many cases only provided drivers in an RPM format that's intended to be installed in a RHEL-like environment.
  - nycticorax 6y ago
    Which is a good reason someone might choose a RHELish distro over Debian, no?
paul_f 6y ago
If you're using Cpanel, you have no choice but to use Redhat, CentOS or Fedora.
- syshum 6y ago
  That is changing, they are going to Support CloudLinux, and Ubuntu now https://blog.cpanel.com/centos-8-end-of-life-announcement/ https://blog.cpanel.com/centos-8-end-of-life-announcement/
  - paul_f 6y ago
    Glad to see, but worry that Cpanel on Ubuntu coming in late 2021, corresponding to the end of CentOS 8, is cutting it close.
theevilsharpie 6y ago
> I am really interested to know why should anyone go with this when Debian or Ubuntu LTS exist. There is a large world of proprietary enterprise software that is tested, developed, and supported solely on RHEL. CentOS (and theoretically, Rocky Linux) can run these applications because they are essentially a reskin of RHEL. Debian and Ubuntu LTS cannot (or at least not in a supported state) because they are not RHEL.
itsjustjoe 6y ago
rpm. If your systems are built around rpm already that alone is a good enough reason.
jpalomaki 6y ago
Not an expert, but I’ve understood CentOS was interesting for people who run RedHat for production, but want something free for non-prod hosts.
- dmix 6y ago
  For me it's always been about stability and the long term support of a 'free' distribution. That has also historically been their bread and butter which got them wide-adoption. The branding stuff was a plus to the sys-admins and Linux die hards.
- davoneus 6y ago
  This. We used CentOS as dev environments, and RHEL as production. It gave us the best of both worlds; an unsupported but compatible and stable dev environment we could bring up and throw away as much as we wanted _Without_ licensing BS. And when the devs were happy with it, the move of a project to RHEL was easy and uneventful. And don't even get me started on the 'free' dev version of RHEL. It's a PITA to use, we've tried. It's also why we've halted our RH purchasing for the moment. Sure, it's caused our RHEL reps no end of consternation and stress but too bad. I've been honest with them, and told them that they are probably lying through their teeth (without knowing it) when they parrot the line that RH will have some magic answer for "expanded" and/or "reduced cost" Streams usage in "1st half of 21". That trust died when RH management axed CentOS8 like they did.
viraptor 6y ago
Apart from the long support, RHEL based distros also give you built in selinux support. Apparmor exists, but it's not comparable in features and existing policies.
- throwaway092835 6y ago
  selinux is provided by Debian as well and it's hardly a popular (or very useful) feature compared to daemon and application sandboxing.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    The module itself is provided, yes. The policies are not really integrated into Debian systems. You can adjust them to work, but it's way more work than using ready ones on a RHEL-like system.
pak9rabid 6y ago
Drivers for hardware that were only ever intended to work with RHEL (EMC's PowerPath drivers, for example).
tw04 6y ago
Rocky is going to be exactly what CentOS was: a free version of RHEL. The reason you would use this vs. Debian or Ubuntu is because you've got systems that need to mirror your production, but you don't want/need enterprise support on them. When I worked for a hardware vendor we had customers who ran hundreds of CentOS boxes in dev/test alongside their production RHEL boxes. If there was an issue with a driver, we simply asked that they reproduce it on RHEL (which was easy to do). If they had been running debian or ubuntu LTS the answer would have been: I suggest you reach out the development mailing list and seek out support there. Whether you like it or not, most hardware vendors want/require you to have an enterprise support contract on your OS in order to help with driver issues.
ernst_klim 6y ago
> when Debian or Ubuntu LTS exist I'm not familiar with Debian, do they have same infrastructure and documentation quality as RHEL? For example do they have anything like Koji [1] for easy automated package building? [1] https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/ https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/
area51org 6y ago
Debian/Ubuntu are great. However, there are people and companies that prefer the Red Hat way. That's also great.
StillBored 6y ago
RHEL and its derivatives are the only linux distribution which maintains binary compatibility over 10+ years while getting not only security updates but feature additions when possible. This is something I don't think the wider community understands, nor do they understand the incredible amount of work it takes to back-port major kernel/etc features while maintaining a stable kernel ABI as well as userspace ABI. Every single other distribution stops providing feature updates within a year or two. So LTS, really means "old with a few security updates" while RHEL means, will run efficiently on your hardware (including newer than the distro) with the same binary drivers and packages from 3rd party sources for the entire lifespan. AKA, its more a windows model than a traditional linux distro in that it allows hardware vendors to ship binary drivers, and software vendors to ship binary packages. That is a huge part of why its the most commonly supported distro for engineering tool chains, and a long list of other commercial hardware and software.
- acdha 6y ago
  That's the value pitch for RHEL, where it's understandable — whether or not you like the enterprise IT model of avoiding upgrades as long as possible, there's a ton of money in it. I think the gap is the question of how many people there are who want enterprise-style lifetimes but don't actually want support. If you're running servers which don't need a paid support contract, upgrading Debian every 5 years is hardly a significant burden (and balanced by not having to routinely backport packages). There's some benefit to, say, being able to develop skills an employer is looking for but that's not a huge pool of users. I think this is the reason behind the present situation: CentOS' main appeal was to people who don't want to pay for RHEL, and not enough of those people contribute to support a community. That lead to the sale to Red Hat in the first place and it's unclear to me that anyone else could be more successful with the same pitch.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    >who want enterprise-style lifetimes but don't actually want support But lifetimes are support. Support isn't just, or even primarily, about making a phone call and saying "Help, it's broken." After all, there's nothing keeping someone from taking a snapshot of a codebase and running it unchanged for 10 years. Probably not a good idea if you're connected to the network, but certainly possible.
Shorel 6y ago
Switching distributions is an uphill fight when the company has used a version of RedHat for 20 years. Most developers use Ubuntu in their laptops. Virtualized on Windows, but Ubuntu nonetheless.

murat124 6y ago

What is the vision for Rocky Linux? A solid, stable, and transparent alternative for production environments, developed by the community for the community. Hence the name Rocky Linux, I suppose? Solid as a rock. Although I'll be inclined to think of it as series of movies. Perhaps even split wood before installing Rocky 5?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Darmody 6y ago
"Thinking back to early CentOS days... My cofounder was Rocky McGaugh. He is no longer with us, so as a H/T to him, who never got to see the success that CentOS came to be, I introduce to you...Rocky Linux" — Gregory Kurtzer, Founder
- deelowe 6y ago
  This project just oozes good-heartedness. I wish him all the best.
  - joana035 6y ago
    I wish all the best for Rocky Linux, it is Linux after all. Is always good to have diversity and a community driven project.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  What is an "H/T"?
  - Darmody 6y ago
    Hat tip.
throwaway201103 6y ago
I think of Rocky the moose from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Not a confidence-inspiring name. Edit: actually Rocky was the flying squirrel.

hitpointdrew 6y ago

Welp...that didn't take long. I expected something like this would happen in light of the recent changes over at CentOS.

macintux 6y ago
Took even less time than you think. I remember the original Rocky announcement was the same day (or maybe next) as IBM's.
dboreham 6y ago
More like some contract clause expired, triggering both events.

AntiImperialist 6y ago

I doubt how successful this will turn out to be because of the following reasons: - The old CentOS had a brand value, which Rocky Linux has to earn back all over again. - The old Red Hat was nice to CentOS or at least wasn't particularly hostile. That does not mean IBM will be nice too. - It may be too short a notice for current CentOS users to wait for Rocky Linux to come through. They may already move away to other alternatives like Debian or Ubuntu or Amazon Linux or whatever fits their use case. - If because of some miracle, Rocky Linux turns out to be just as successful as CentOS, there is a chance that either Red Hat or a competitor will end up taking control of it too. Corporate sponsorship is too lucrative to decline. So, it will end up with the same fate as CentOS.

albru123 6y ago
I don't see how it would be too short a notice for current CentOS users really. At least for majority of users running CentOS in their production systems and relying on a long-term support. It's not like they just go and trash their production setup the very moment its running distro lifespan is shortened. I'd expect the opposite actually, since you're looking for something well supported.
- houseofzeus 6y ago
  Agree, I'd imagine most of them are also still on 7, which the lifecycle didn't change for and goes to 2024 even if they just stay where they are.
kubanczyk 6y ago
> So, it will end up with the same fate as CentOS. Same fate as CentOS, let me think... Can I replace a few system packages to convert it to a binary-compatible, patchable, community-supported distro, just differently branded? Okay, count me in.
LeoPanthera 6y ago
CentOS had no "brand value" when it was new. Red Hat was not nice to CentOS when it was new. The "same fate" as CentOS would mean surviving for 16 years.

tcldr 6y ago

Rocky makes me think ‘unstable’ and ‘uncertain’ which seems at odds with the stated vision of the distribution. Might make for a tough sell.

dfdz 6y ago
I got the same impression. Do you think it would be too late to change the name to "Rock Linux" or "Rock Solid Linux"? Since branding is so important this really seems like something that should go through focus groups or crowd sources somehow? Maybe a poll on hacker news? Unfortunately, I really think changing the name would be critical to the success of the project. Imagine you are a technical lead and you have to convince your boss to switch from RHEL to Rocky Linux... Edit: I know the name is in tribute to Rocky McGaugh, but I still think "Rock Solid Linux" "named in tribute to CentOs co-founder Rocky McGaugh" would make the project more successful
- dimitrios1 6y ago
  Given we are talking of branding, did you both completely miss the logo? To me it's clear the name is in reference to mountains, as in the Rocky Mountains.
  - tcldr 6y ago
    No, I didn’t – and neither will many others! That’s the point. It’s a great tribute to one of the late Cent OS founders, but it comes with unfortunate marketing hurdles.
- shawnz 6y ago
  One disadvantage of "Rock Solid Linux" is that it shortens poorly. I think "Rock Solid" or "RSL" would be ambiguous. On the other hand I think "Rocky" sounds nice and unique (at least in this space). Also I feel naming it "Rock Solid Linux" would be a bit gaudy or arrogant.
- cat199 6y ago
  there was a now-defunct 'rock linux' already: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=rock https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=rock

nasalgoat 6y ago

The branding here I think is a big issue. The name "Rocky Linux" sounds too homebrew and unprofessional. CentOS sounds Enterprise-ish. I find it hard to believe any corporate client would take it seriously.

1-6 6y ago
You can get far with bad branding. Case: Ubuntu
- tokai 6y ago
  or java
- jolmg 6y ago
  Why is Ubuntu bad branding? Seems short, memorable, good meaning, original, etc.
  - colesantiago 6y ago
    the naming makes it sound like unstable version of linux.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - joana035 6y ago
      Ubuntu is a Nguni Bantu term meaning "humanity". It is often translated as "I am because we are", or "humanity towards others", or in Zulu "umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" or in Xhosa, "umntu ngumntu ngabantu" but is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity" Taken from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_philosophy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_philosophy But yes, Ubuntu is based on Debian's Unstable branch.
      - jolmg 6y ago

bserge 6y ago

Great, another Linux distro... I am trying to use something, but I just can't. Spending my time fixing problems instead of doing actual work is fun, for a while. Every damn time I start this one laptop with Linux, trying to get away from Windows 10, there's something to fix. Oh, the undervolt is not being applied, time to build the whole thing again. Oh, restart causes it to wank the hard drive indefinitely for some reason. Oh, shutdown is still not working, glad I got a power button. Nouveau glitches. Bluetooth has disconnected and just refuses to work again. Audio recording is not working again. Video encoding is not working again. Video playback is not working again... And it runs so well in a virtual machine. Why can't people just band together and create one good Linux distro for the desktop. Rhetorical question, I guess.

joana035 6y ago
Because of hardware manufacturers, closed/proprietary firmwares, Microsoft standards...
xrisk 6y ago
This… is not the place to rant about Linux? Desktop compatibility is not the goal of CentOS style distros.
reggegg 6y ago
Fortunately this is a server distro, and there definitely aren't enough of those around (stable trustworthy ones). While your experiences with the desktop are unfortunate, on most common laptops (cheap and expensive ones) most Linux distros run well, even if some very specific devices have issues with the kernel drivers
orev 6y ago
This distro is meant for servers, or maybe long term stable desktops you’d want in a classroom or something like that. People running servers don’t need any of the stuff you mentioned.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  CentOS was free RHEL. RHEL is not intrinsically a "server" OS. I developed on a RHEL workstation at my previous job. I'm not sure where the idea that CentOS is for servers came from.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nps1 6y ago

The next CentOS will be where the core developers who are actually contributing to project will move. However, branding does matter if you want enterprise following. Rocky does sound unprofessional.

sp332 6y ago
Good. That means it's less likely to sell out to some suit farm and get cancelled like CentOS did.
- effie 6y ago
  > suit farm I love new language gems. Thanks!
bonzini 6y ago
Core developers and infrastructure is moving to CentOS Stream. However the software that is running on said infrastructure is all open source.
- nps1 6y ago
  That is concerning. How is Oracle Linux compared to Rocky Linux. Why not people use Oracle Linux which is a decent company backed product.
  - Tom4hawk 6y ago
    Product might be decent but Oracle is far from being decent.

29athrowaway 6y ago

This project name makes me feel better than "Debian". Debian = Deb + Ian. Ian Murdoch broke up with Deb, and later he hanged himself.

hnarn 6y ago

The fact that a majority of the comments are whining about the name really shows you the worst part about open source: the non-contributing but highly entitled part of the community. If you don’t like the name, launch your own CentOS replacement. There’s no better time than now. If there’s one thing this project does not need right now, it’s armchair marketing experts. If you do care about a viable CentOS replacement, do something. Contribute code, money or expertise. The last thing any new and vulnerable project needs is another “idea guy” or a new logo.

jeremymcanally 6y ago
“The loudest mouths are often attached to the idlest hands.” - ancient open source software proverb (It’s not ancient. I made it up. But it’s sadly true.)
- goodpoint 6y ago
  It's very true and for a basic reason - one minute spent doing is one minute taken away from talking/writing. This is the reason why many excellent projects remain obscure while marketing-driven products become famous... and often take credit for other people's ideas.
nps1 6y ago
Or it just means the name does matter to vast user community. And you are hell bent on not listening to user community and not taking valid criticism.
- dvt 6y ago
  No, @hnarn is right. And you don't really "get" this until you start maintaining an OSS repo (I speak from experience). For years, I was very critical of Linus Torvalds and his brusque attitude. Then I started a few moderately-popular OSS projects, and the entitled masses started pouring in. After a while, it's hard to refrain from telling people to just screw off.
- macksd 6y ago

geraldcombs 6y ago

Setting up shop under a new name can be stomach-churningly daunting. Best of luck to Gregory and the rest of the team.

anonymousiam 6y ago

I have not seen much mention of alternatives to RHEL besides Oracle Linux. Another excellent alternative exists here: https://scientificlinux.org/ https://scientificlinux.org/

kbenson 6y ago
Scientific Linux/Fermilab did not release a version 8, and instead opted to install CentOS 8 on their clusters instead of roll their own version.[1] 1: https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-ANNOUNCE;11d6001.1904 https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX...
- joana035 6y ago
  I hope they make a comeback or join Rocky efforts
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  There is also Springdale Linux
  - em500 6y ago
    Did you actually check if they have a maintained 8 release out there? AFAICT they have not released anything after 8.1 more than a year ago.

electrotype 6y ago

Someone care to explain why did CentOS switch from downstream to upstream builds? I guess there is a reason.

gvb 6y ago
Money. RHEL requires expensive licenses. CentOS was RHEL without the RedHat branding and without the expensive licensing. By design, there was a nearly complete overlap between RHEL and CentOS. By "repurposing" CentOS into a "rolling release", RedHat (IBM) has broken the overlap so CentOS (free licensing) no longer competes directly against RHEL (expensive licensing).
- Spivak 6y ago
  This is so misinformed it's funny. CentOS and RHEL will now be down to the compiler flags compatible since RHEL minor releases will now just be point-in-time forks of CentOS with security fixes and backports from, you guessed it, CentOS.
  - gvb 6y ago
    CentOS and RHEL will only be exactly the same at the moment when RHEL is a point-in-time fork of CentOS. As soon ad RHEL forks from CentOS, CentOS will roll forward and will no longer be exactly the same as RHEL. Previously, CentOS was a rebuild of RHEL. In between RHEL releases, CentOS was exactly the same as RHEL. When RHEL had a release/fix/backpoint, CentOS trailed until it was rebuilt from the new RHEL source. The "old" CentOS was exactly the same nearly always (nearly perfect overlap) and the "new" CentOS is exactly the same nearly never (almost no overlap).
    - Spivak 6y ago
      You act like RHEL 7.1 is a fixed artifact — it’s constantly receiving updates, security patches, and backports. And CentOS always trails behind on those updates so it’s never exactly the same as RHEL either. This change makes CentOS so much closer to RHEL that it’s weird that people are acting like the opposite is happening.

kondbg 6y ago

Devil's advocate: why should I choose this yet-to-exist distribution over something already existing, such as Oracle Linux? The most common argument (Oracle is evil and litigious. Therefore, using Oracle Linux will result in me being sued) honestly seems like FUD. All RHEL downstream distributions rebuild the same SRPMs that RHEL provides. Doing a quick comparison over some common packages (kernel, httpd, openssl, etc.) between CentOS 8.3 (https://vault.centos.org/8.3.2011/BaseOS/Source/SPackages/ https://vault.centos.org/8.3.2011/BaseOS/Source/SPackages/) Oracle Linux 8.3 (https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL8/baseos/latest/x86_64/index_src.html https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL8/baseos/latest/x8...) shows that they are indeed byte identical (with the exception of certain spec files including debranding patches). What is the value of having a separate RHEL derivative? It isn't as if the "community" can propose/submit any changes, since any changes will cease to make the downstream distribution a "bug for bug" compatible RHEL derivative. If I actually wanted to participate in the larger RHEL-derivative community, I would need to actually submit my changes to the CentOS stream project.

haolez 6y ago
Oracle Linux might change the rules in the future. It kind of just happened with CentOS :)
- ajsfoux234 6y ago
  Well, the same thing might happen with Rocky Linux as well :)
  - hnarn 6y ago
    “Anything can happen” is not an argument. It’s about quantified risk.
    - emayljames 6y ago
      Yes, and the 2 parties have very different motivates.
  - 6y ago

based2 6y ago

https://rocksdb.org/ https://rocksdb.org/ from fb

tux 6y ago

I think the name and the logo is good. Don't listen to the people who just keep talking and not helping! Good to see that CentOS cofonder picked this up and now became a founder of Rocky Linux. This shows dedication and rock solid background. Rocky Linux will be a project to follow, help and use in production environment. Thank you for all your hard work!

p1necone 6y ago
People complaining about the name to the extent that they are is such an extreme example of bikeshedding.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Keverw 6y ago
Reminds me about how people don't even give CockroachDB a chance because of it's name. Every time it's mentioned on HN, people can't help but to bring up it's name.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Same happens with GIMP, it’s just not smart marketing.
  - znpy 6y ago
    in GIMP's defense, GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, whereas names as Red Hat, Ubuntu and many others are not acronyms
    - asddubs 6y ago
      to be fair to red hat and ubuntu, those names don't have multiple inappropriate meanings

e40 6y ago

Anyone believe that I will, at some point, be able to point my CentOS 8.x configuration at the Rocky Linux repo and just upgrade to it? That would be ideal. I realized GPG keys will need to be replaced, etc.

Shared404 6y ago
I seem to remember seeing somewhere that that was the plan. How accurate that is, I don't know.
marcolussetti 6y ago
I would imagine that to be the future state. Other RHEL-compatible distros offer it, I believe.
freiheit 6y ago
Worst case is might have to also manually replace a few "release" and "logos" packages (which is what's involved now for switching from RHEL to CentOS or OracleLinux)... More likely there'll be a simple script to swap from CentOS (or RHEL) to Rocky.. Or they could have a "rocky-release" package with `Obsoletes: centos-release, redhat-release` and a `yum install https://rockylinux.org/rocky-release-8.2-1.noarch.rpm https://rockylinux.org/rocky-release-8.2-1.noarch.rpm ; yum upgrade` is all that'd be required to swap... TL;DR: should be very easy, but there's minor variations in methods that I doubt are finalized.
mroche 6y ago
It is a planned feature, yes.
- antihero 6y ago
  Hopefully one available by Dec 31, 2021!
strzibny 6y ago
I think so. Oracle Linux is the same kind of clone and does exactly that[0]. [0] https://nts.strzibny.name/migrating-centos-to-oracle-linux/ https://nts.strzibny.name/migrating-centos-to-oracle-linux/

igotroot 6y ago

Looking forward to give this a spin at home to see if it'll be the future of non-RH based linux servers, although it'll take a long time before people are willing to throw it in prod like they do with CentOS. No way to change that except time. Also it's interesting that some people defined Rocky as being 'unstable' when others read it as being 'solid as a rock'.

basilgohar 6y ago
But it is a RH-based – it's just like CentOS used to be. It's just not owned nor operated by RH.

mongol 6y ago

I have not used CentOS but I have considered it. If OpenSUSE did not exist, that is probably what I would use. Or perhaps now, Rocky Linux

CivBase 6y ago

I knew what CentOS was, but never followed it because I've never personally had use for it. Still, I appreciate what it did and was glad to have it as an option should I ever need a super stable distro in the future. That said, I think the FAQ is missing an answer for a critical question: What ultimately drove CentOS to its regrettable fate and what will Rocky Linux do to avoid a similar misfortune?

teknopaul 6y ago
IBM. Rocky will not be be IBM.
- CivBase 6y ago
  I don't think CentOS ever intended to be IBM either.
  - flatline 6y ago
    I always thought it was more than a little incestuous for RH to acquire and maintain the RH clone, but it did fill a niche.
    - rnd0 6y ago
      Centos was broke. Otherwise it's doubtful that they would have sold to Redhat.
- nickysielicki 6y ago
  The most frustrating thing about this is that Redhat was making a profit before IBM bought them. They had existed for 20 some years on a business model that business people didn’t understand, and they were able to do that because they understood what open source would become and how they could play a role in that. One of the things that YC is always talking about is that founders looking for ideas should look to identify situations where most people think it’s going to turn out one way, but most people are wrong and it’s actually going to turn out another way. In the context of the late 90s, where virtually all software was proprietary, they bet on open source software and support plans, and made a sustainable company on it. They contributed to open source so that they would have the expertise, gave all the software away for free, and then sold the expertise through support plans. And then the business people came along and they’re showing a deep misunderstanding of why Redhat was able to sell support plans in the first place. People on RHEL are going to stay on RHEL, but people on CentOS — the market of people who are not paying customers but could theoretically become customers, are almost certainly going to go to Canonical. This will kill Redhat.

CoconutPilot 6y ago

Whats missing is an analysis of why CentOS failed. I think Rocky Linux needs to put out a plan how they will make themselves financially viable as we've had 3 high profile RHEL respins go down in the last 10 years. CentOS failed twice, it ran out of money in 2014 and was rescued back then by Redhat sponsership. Again in 2020. Another widely used RHEL respin was Scientific Linux which mothballed when RHEL 7 was released. There seems to be lots of potential users but not lots of potential money for a RHEL respin.

fierarul 6y ago
It's not really surprising that a project that companies use since they don't want to pay RedHat licenses will not get any money at all...
pinewurst 6y ago
It’s hard to continually fund any project defined by its users’ abhorrence of compensation.
- cpncrunch 6y ago
  I think Ubuntu has a decent business plan, charging people $225/yr to extend support from 5 to 10 years. I would happily pay that in order to avoid having to migrate as often. CentOS just gave everything away for free and then is wondering why they're not making any money.
  - loeg 6y ago
    RHEL has a business model too.
    - cpncrunch 6y ago
      Yes, indeed, but I was referring to Centos. There isn't enough of a benefit for most of us to upgrade if we get security updates free for 10 years and don't need support.

Alupis 6y ago

> The CentOS project recently announced a shift in strategy for CentOS. Whereas previously CentOS existed as a downstream build of its upstream vendor (it receives patches and updates after the upstream vendor does), it will be shifting to an upstream build (testing patches and updates before inclusion in the upstream vendor. Wow, I haven't been following this very closely - but isn't that Fedora they're describing? At least... traditionally... Fedora was upstream, RHEL was stabalized in the middle, and CentOS was downstream - regarding patch releases and features, etc. Is Fedora going away too?

smnrchrds 6y ago
Fedora is desktop-focused. RHEL and CentOS are server-focused. I think there is a place for both. But who knows, maybe IBM will discontinue one, or both.
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  RHEL and CentOS are both server and desktop. The desktop is just not flashy or shiny or bleeding edge. The default install is/was Gnome 3 shell (For RHEL7 and CentOS 7). I am not sure if this is still the case, but Redhat used to require 100% of its employees to use RHEL Workstation as the desktop.
  - doublepg23 6y ago
    I know a sales guy who had a choice of Windows or Mac, I think engineers use Linux.
    - LinuxBender 6y ago
      That's good to hear. I felt kindof bad for the receptionist being forced to use RHEL. This was during RHEL3 and the desktop was not great.
bayindirh 6y ago
> Is Fedora going away too? Nope. - Fedora is cutting edge/desktop. - CentOS Stream is testing/RC area for RHEL patches. - RHEL is the stable server for enterprise. This is what I understood from a reply to another comment of me in a similar thread.

charliebrownau 6y ago

Maybe its finally time to walk away from Cloud Centralisation Corporations and invest time, money and energy into a different Linix eco system

nycticorax 6y ago

Does anyone know what exactly what were the legal/financial mechanics of RedHat 'absorbing' CentOS in the first place? Is "CentOS" a trademark? Is the CentOS logo trademarked? Who exactly owned the servers that CentOS was distributed from? Did CentOS have people on the payroll who took jobs at RedHat? (Did CentOS have a payroll in the first place?)

qiqitori 6y ago
They bought the trademark. From https://www.centos.org/legal/trademarks/ https://www.centos.org/legal/trademarks/ > The CentOS Marks are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. (“Red Hat”). Most servers that distribute current binary RPMs are mirrors operated by third parties. You can be reasonably certain that servers like www.centos.org, mirror.centos.org, vault.centos.org, or buildlogs.centos.org are paid for by Red Hat. Their IPs are mostly AWS. https://www.redhat.com/ja/about/press-releases/red-hat-and-centos-join-forces https://www.redhat.com/ja/about/press-releases/red-hat-and-c...

optimalsolver 6y ago

I hate the name.

macspoofing 6y ago
To be fair, CentOS isn't a great name, and neither is 'Red Hat'. 'Rocky Linux' isn't too bad actually.
- thebigspacefuck 6y ago
  I think they should have named it PennyOS, but that’s just my 2 cents.
  - rnd0 6y ago
    Rocky was the co-founder of CentOS. Who's Penny?

macspoofing 6y ago

What's the point of keeping the CentOS brand at this point? Why not have RHEL and RHEL Stream?

smitty1110 6y ago
Because there is still a chance they can extract value from it, or up-sell someone from CentOS to RHEL and a juicy support contract. And they will keep it a round to keep the trademark, if for no other reason than to deny it from everyone else.

technick 6y ago

I feel like the future solution should be a dig at IBM for being a evil company and RH for selling out.

cdnsteve 6y ago

Thank you!

tubularhells 6y ago

I'm so glad I build all my servers on Debian.

fb03 6y ago
Me too. but unfortunately, not all 'corporate' software runs or finds all the libs on Debian based distros.. which sucks I know, because I too find this whole 'corporate blessed linux' thingy really unproductive. I work on servers used in VFX rendering pipelines and some software will simply refuse to properly run if I don't give it at least a CentOS. And if I do manage to get it running on Debian/Ubuntu, automatically I'm voiding the company's support because I'm using an 'unsupported Linux distribution'. sux.
- mroche 6y ago
  Hello fellow VFX/Anim admin! And yeah, even though we have the platform agnostic VFX Reference Platform, pretty much everything in this industry revolves around RHEL/CentOS. Except SideFX, they are a golden exception, and explicitly support non-Red Hat family distributions.
  - gonewest 6y ago
    For those not familiar with the visual effects platform: https://vfxplatform.com/ https://vfxplatform.com/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

musicale 6y ago

> Additionally, support for CentOS Linux 8 has been cut short, from May 31, 2029 to December 31, 2021. That has to be disappointing for the people who adopted CentOS for its stability and long-term support.

commandertso 6y ago

One thing to consider, for the folks that assume everyone on CentOS is a parasite allergic to paying for software... CentOS is heavily used in the HPC academic organizations, in part because paying licensing fees for an OS on 2k+ nodes isn’t workable in academia.

playcache 6y ago
Don't they use scientific linux (CentOS clone?)
- toyg 6y ago
  SL died some time ago.
- cbmuser 6y ago
  Scientific Linux has been abandoned in favor of CentOS.
- simonh 6y ago
  Scientific was discontinued and the sponsoring organisations switched to CentOS 8. It looks like the work involved in rebuilding RHEL 8 was too much to deal with.
fifnir 6y ago
Indeed we're running CentOS on the cluster at work. I always wondered, why not Debian ?
- corty 6y ago
  Support. Commercial software packages that you may want to run often come with a list of supported operating systems which usually only includes RedHat and maybe SuSE. Ubuntu and Debian are rarely officially supported. And although you usually can get things to work somehow, your application software support will be useless because all tickets get closed with "unsupported OS, use RedHat". With CentOS you at least might have a chance to get a non-useless answer from you application's support team.

matt-attack 6y ago

Can someone explain why it’s not exceedingly simple to clone the existing Centos concept? Isn’t all the code that does the builds, artwork replacement, etc all open source? I would think that rebranding CentOS as Rocky is a rather trivial process of replatforming all the codebase and replacing any “Centos” with “Rocky”.

jlgaddis 6y ago
No kidding, right!? I mean, if you think about it, all that's really needed is for a "s/CentOS/Rocky/g" over all of the repositories. Then, the other 99% of the project is just waiting for the packages to rebuild and get sync'd on all of the mirrors that they could just will into existence with their minds. Really, though, let's be honest here: If they weren't spending so much time writing up press releases and commenting on issues on GitHub, they probably could've already basically been done, the new package repositories could've been published and mirrored, and half of the CentOS 8 boxes out there could've already been migrated over. <sigh> -- EDIT: To be clear, I am not serious. I thought the question I was replying to was completely f##king absurd but chose to respond with sarcasm (it seemed less likely to result in a warning from @dang than my initial reply).
- 8draco8 6y ago
  But seriously, can somebody ELI5 this project. If Centos is just 1:1 RHEL with removed branding then what new bugs will show up in Centos that are result of that rebranding and will not be fixed by RHEL devs? Is there a code in RHEL that is also copy writed which had to replaced and maintained by Centos devs? What am I missing?
  - slipheen 6y ago
    I'm not fully versed on all the things that would be needed, but at the bare minimum it would seem like you would need a bunch of automated processes for just the building - Import src packages, making sure that you copy in changes/patches when RHEL does. - Replace the RH trademarks in every package - Build every package and run verification tests for each arch - Build ISOs You would also need I said if infrastructure servers that can scale to a large number of users for Yum/RPMs, etc. Then you also need a set of servers for issue tracking and a way to break it out per package. I wouldn't imagine that it is anything which can't be done, it just seems like there's a lot of little pieces that you would need to set up, and infrastructure you need to run.

Ice_cream_suit 6y ago

There is going to be a rocky road ahead... Why not just Rock Linux ? If you want corporate customers, use a corporate name. To those who disagree, would you be comfortable telling your board of directors that you use "insert offensive word" Linux ?

arvindamirtaa 6y ago

Do we know what kind of work is required and what are the kind of contributors they're looking for? Happy to help wherever I can.

nobody9999 6y ago
cf. https://wiki.rockylinux.org/contributing https://wiki.rockylinux.org/contributing

arvindamirtaa 6y ago

While it's really sad that CentOS 8 will meet it's end so soon, for those who are on CentOS 7, the planned EOL is still 2024. And if that applies to you, that's plenty of time for Rocky Linux to get rolling. Just a thought.

johnx123-up 6y ago

OT: What is the origin of RockyText font in https://rockylinux.org/ https://rockylinux.org/ ?

gtirloni 6y ago
https://github.com/rocky-linux/rocky-fonts https://github.com/rocky-linux/rocky-fonts

homerhomer 6y ago

Just Linux doing what Linux does.

tannhaeuser 6y ago

I wish RL all the best, but I'm glad I switched to debian-stable for server workloads (mostly Docker anyway). If anything, the story of CentOS (and White Box Linux before that) tells me a RedHat clone isn't a feasible project economically in the long run. So it may be better to put your money where your mouth is. Of my customers, none had used CentOS/RH as base image for Docker builds anyway.

strzibny 6y ago

What I missed in the announcements of CentOS news and the obvious disappointment is the talk about whether Stream is actually a path you can take forward. I put together what we actually know about the CentOS -> Stream migration so far[0]. I personally might give stream a chance although if Rocky is released, I imagine it a no-brainer. [0] https://nts.strzibny.name/migrating-centos-to-centos-stream-8/ https://nts.strzibny.name/migrating-centos-to-centos-stream-...

deleted 6y ago

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