6 ms·

I'd say this is pretty fair considering that a fair amount of serious issues can be expected for the first ever release of a distro.

pantalaimon 5y ago
But isn't this just Red Hat with the name changed?
- cpach 5y ago
  Kinda sorta yeah. But I guess the Rocky project still needs to set up their own build servers, CI/CD, package repositories and that kinda stuff.
mekster 5y ago
And yet, ironically people like it better than CentOS stream? People are making such a big fuss about CentOS getting slightly closer to Fedora.
- fragbait65 5y ago
  That's not what this is about. The scientific community cannot run a distribution with "unneeded" updates to libraries. That goes for other organizations as well.
  - mekster 5y ago
    That's for those who can't pay for RHEL subscriptions and they have such critical experiments going on that getting updates earlier than RedHat screws them up? They can surely opt out of updating automatically and only apply updates after reading the changelogs.
    - jabl 5y ago
      In many cases systems run out-of-tree drivers like Lustre, MOFED, NVIDIA etc. that tend to break due to kernel internal API changes. Yes, also for changes incorporated into minor RHEL releases like X.Y -> X.(Y+1), though not for kernel security updates within a minor X.Y release. At the same time they might need to keep up to date wrt security updates. So if CentOS stream implies that the kernel will randomly get an API-breaking update, with no security support for the previous version, that is not workable.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    I always found that to be a little weird. Why is scientific projects that dependent on even minor version changes? Isn’t that normally an indication that there’s something horribly wrong in your code?
    - fragbait65 5y ago
      The reason they don't want to do anything other than security updates, and sometimes not even that, is because they need consistency across calculations over time. This might be a poor example, but lets say an error was found in a computation in a library, for example a rounding error or something, in that case, more often than not, the community will rather live with the known error and have consistency instead.
      - mrweasel 5y ago
        Won’t that make reproducing results difficult? I mean it seems like a result won’t be worth much if it’s only reproducable with a specific version of say glibc from five years ago. Over the cause of one experiment sure, I can see why you’d like to know the calculation are done identically. I just question the validity/usefulness of a calculation that can only be repeated on one version of some library. Surely the overall result should remain the same.
        throw0101a 5y ago
        There are always inconsistencies in the scientific world: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudge_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudge_factor A good portion of experimentalists' time is probably spent in trying to figure just how badly they've messed their experiments as compared to reality. Major discoveries are sometimes based on teasing apart those differences: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon_g-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon_g-2 In my EE studies we had a specific course just in examining the limitations of (digital) numbers: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_analysis * https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.h...
- Saint_Genet 5y ago
  Stream type systems are pretty much a non-starter in high security and safety critical applications.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Personally, I care very little about the technical angle (yes, Stream is probably a fine product) and very much about Red Hat reneging (yanking CentOS 8 from 2029 to 2021).

pantalaimon 5y ago

But isn't this just Red Hat with the name changed?

cpach 5y ago
Kinda sorta yeah. But I guess the Rocky project still needs to set up their own build servers, CI/CD, package repositories and that kinda stuff.

mekster 5y ago

And yet, ironically people like it better than CentOS stream? People are making such a big fuss about CentOS getting slightly closer to Fedora.

fragbait65 5y ago
That's not what this is about. The scientific community cannot run a distribution with "unneeded" updates to libraries. That goes for other organizations as well.
- mekster 5y ago
  That's for those who can't pay for RHEL subscriptions and they have such critical experiments going on that getting updates earlier than RedHat screws them up? They can surely opt out of updating automatically and only apply updates after reading the changelogs.
  - jabl 5y ago
    In many cases systems run out-of-tree drivers like Lustre, MOFED, NVIDIA etc. that tend to break due to kernel internal API changes. Yes, also for changes incorporated into minor RHEL releases like X.Y -> X.(Y+1), though not for kernel security updates within a minor X.Y release. At the same time they might need to keep up to date wrt security updates. So if CentOS stream implies that the kernel will randomly get an API-breaking update, with no security support for the previous version, that is not workable.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  I always found that to be a little weird. Why is scientific projects that dependent on even minor version changes? Isn’t that normally an indication that there’s something horribly wrong in your code?
  - fragbait65 5y ago
    The reason they don't want to do anything other than security updates, and sometimes not even that, is because they need consistency across calculations over time. This might be a poor example, but lets say an error was found in a computation in a library, for example a rounding error or something, in that case, more often than not, the community will rather live with the known error and have consistency instead.
    - mrweasel 5y ago
      Won’t that make reproducing results difficult? I mean it seems like a result won’t be worth much if it’s only reproducable with a specific version of say glibc from five years ago. Over the cause of one experiment sure, I can see why you’d like to know the calculation are done identically. I just question the validity/usefulness of a calculation that can only be repeated on one version of some library. Surely the overall result should remain the same.
      - throw0101a 5y ago
        There are always inconsistencies in the scientific world: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudge_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudge_factor A good portion of experimentalists' time is probably spent in trying to figure just how badly they've messed their experiments as compared to reality. Major discoveries are sometimes based on teasing apart those differences: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon_g-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon_g-2 In my EE studies we had a specific course just in examining the limitations of (digital) numbers: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_analysis * https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.h...
Saint_Genet 5y ago
Stream type systems are pretty much a non-starter in high security and safety critical applications.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Personally, I care very little about the technical angle (yes, Stream is probably a fine product) and very much about Red Hat reneging (yanking CentOS 8 from 2029 to 2021).