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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,

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.
    - effie 6y ago
      There have been some interesting observations on HN and elsewhere, that Canonical for a long time didn't know what it is doing, starting and cancelling projects, but in last years it is lowering interest in desktop and is more focused on providing cloud server software and foisting its new products and methodologies on its users(snap). Some people see this as indication that Canonical is positioning itself to be bought for the best price. It makes sense, as Canonical has a large Linux user base but can't make money there. Microsoft is making inroads in Linux world is the most likely buyer.
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.

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.
  - effie 6y ago
    There have been some interesting observations on HN and elsewhere, that Canonical for a long time didn't know what it is doing, starting and cancelling projects, but in last years it is lowering interest in desktop and is more focused on providing cloud server software and foisting its new products and methodologies on its users(snap). Some people see this as indication that Canonical is positioning itself to be bought for the best price. It makes sense, as Canonical has a large Linux user base but can't make money there. Microsoft is making inroads in Linux world is the most likely buyer.

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.