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My first hint that things were starting to go sideways was the extended delay in bringing out CentOS 7, followed by a kernel bug that affected my CPU, where a f

My first hint that things were starting to go sideways was the extended delay in bringing out CentOS 7, followed by a kernel bug that affected my CPU, where a fix was quickly available to RHEL users, and slow in coming to CentOS users. The final straw was trying to keep ZFS built; after one last time where the next kernel's ZFS module failed to build, it was out with CentOS on my home file server, and in with Ubuntu Server. I haven't looked back. I have one last CentOS box, running Asterisk, that I'm about to switch to Debian. Then, it seemed like, all too often, I'd look up a question about CentOS, and get a link to a paywalled page on access.redhat.com for my trouble. Thanks, guys... CentOS 8 came after even worse delays than 7, and, when I spun it up in a VM for a test drive, none of my preferred desktops were available. I said NOPE and moved on. And now, we have this mess. What a shame it had to end this way.

geofft 6y ago
You do remember that, a couple years ago, CentOS was a community project with no relation with Red Hat that went rather out of its way to avoid mentioning Red Hat and drawing trademark ire? Also it costs $40/year to get access to the paywalled docs. Anyway, what a shame it is that Red Hat was acquired by IBM. With customers like you, it's baffling that Red Hat thought they couldn't stay profitable on their own....
- sofixa 6y ago
  > Also it costs $40/year to get access to the paywalled docs Documentation should never be paywalled. It kills SEO and usability, and is very user hostile. Why are you under the impression that GP is or wants to be a customer? I'm not a customer of Google for writing Go code, or of Microsoft for using VS Code, or of Sentry for self-hosting their awesome product. Using FOSS CentOS doesn't make anyone a customer of RH, and that's why the latter screwed the former by abandoning CentOS8 and going back on the announced support lifecycle.
  - geofft 6y ago
    Well, if neither you nor the GP are willing to be customers of Red Hat, didn't you get exactly what you paid for? Of course putting docs behind a paywall is hostile to non-paying users! So am I! (it's also empirically untrue that it kills SEO, given how frequently the docs in question show up in search results.) Like there are two clear options. You can contribute your own labor to a community distro like pre-acquisition CentOS or to Debian, or you can pay for the software you use - and it costs very little money to pay for it. If you do neither, and you lament that things are going poorly for you, you might want to rethink your expectations. Things are going very well for others. An independent CentOS probably could have survived if people were willing to put in the work of release engineering. Unfortunately, there ended up just being one user of CentOS who cared enough to put in the work - and that customer ended up being Red Hat itself. That's why they acquired it. Scientific Linux is also dead. The RHEL SRPMs are still there, just as they have been for decades. Anyone can step up to the plate and make their own community-run rebuild of RHEL if they're unhappy with how things are going.
- flyinghamster 6y ago
  The personal attack is uncalled for. Not to mention, is Red Hat really interested in an individual running a home-built file server? I'm not a huge enterprise. Normally, I'm self-supporting enough with my home network that I'd never need a support contract in the first place, and the workaround for my kernel bug was to run an older kernel until the fix was in place.

geofft 6y ago

You do remember that, a couple years ago, CentOS was a community project with no relation with Red Hat that went rather out of its way to avoid mentioning Red Hat and drawing trademark ire? Also it costs $40/year to get access to the paywalled docs. Anyway, what a shame it is that Red Hat was acquired by IBM. With customers like you, it's baffling that Red Hat thought they couldn't stay profitable on their own....

sofixa 6y ago
> Also it costs $40/year to get access to the paywalled docs Documentation should never be paywalled. It kills SEO and usability, and is very user hostile. Why are you under the impression that GP is or wants to be a customer? I'm not a customer of Google for writing Go code, or of Microsoft for using VS Code, or of Sentry for self-hosting their awesome product. Using FOSS CentOS doesn't make anyone a customer of RH, and that's why the latter screwed the former by abandoning CentOS8 and going back on the announced support lifecycle.
- geofft 6y ago
  Well, if neither you nor the GP are willing to be customers of Red Hat, didn't you get exactly what you paid for? Of course putting docs behind a paywall is hostile to non-paying users! So am I! (it's also empirically untrue that it kills SEO, given how frequently the docs in question show up in search results.) Like there are two clear options. You can contribute your own labor to a community distro like pre-acquisition CentOS or to Debian, or you can pay for the software you use - and it costs very little money to pay for it. If you do neither, and you lament that things are going poorly for you, you might want to rethink your expectations. Things are going very well for others. An independent CentOS probably could have survived if people were willing to put in the work of release engineering. Unfortunately, there ended up just being one user of CentOS who cared enough to put in the work - and that customer ended up being Red Hat itself. That's why they acquired it. Scientific Linux is also dead. The RHEL SRPMs are still there, just as they have been for decades. Anyone can step up to the plate and make their own community-run rebuild of RHEL if they're unhappy with how things are going.
flyinghamster 6y ago
The personal attack is uncalled for. Not to mention, is Red Hat really interested in an individual running a home-built file server? I'm not a huge enterprise. Normally, I'm self-supporting enough with my home network that I'd never need a support contract in the first place, and the workaround for my kernel bug was to run an older kernel until the fix was in place.