6 ms·

Given what Red Hat and the CentOS project did to CentOS 8 I have no desire to use RHEL ever again. Right now it's just Ubuntu LTS and Debian for my needs. Wor

by tadbit 4y ago

Given what Red Hat and the CentOS project did to CentOS 8 I have no desire to use RHEL ever again. Right now it's just Ubuntu LTS and Debian for my needs. Working on eliminating RHEL at work as well, wherever I can.

rjgonza 4y ago
Amen! I share these thoughts and plan of action completely.
geerlingguy 4y ago
For the few systems I upgraded to CentOS 8 back before it was killed, I switched them to Rocky Linux (Alma's also a good choice). I'm still waiting a bit longer to see whether I'll keep my toes in the RHEL-ecosystem-waters, or if I finish moving everything to Ubuntu LTS and Debian.
- tadbit 4y ago
  I think the work being done with Rocky and Alma linux is great! Many kudos to them. However, I'm worried history will simply repeat itself or RHEL will make downstreaming difficult in some way, which could kill those projects.
  - otterley 4y ago
    My understanding is that CentOS as we once knew it (the freely-distributable rebuild of EL 7 and earlier) withered away because its creator and primary maintainer was hired by Red Hat. There was a clear conflict of interest at that point, and Red Hat probably wasn't going to keep paying him to maintain a project in perpetuity that ate into their bottom line. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/centos-project-leader-karanbir-singh-opens-up-on-red-hat-deal/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/centos-project-leader-k... So it's not so much that RHEL tried to strong-arm third-party rebuilders of Enterprise Linux - and I don't think it's in their culture to try - but people involved in these projects are always at risk of being bought out. Volunteering for open source can be a lot of work.
rahen 4y ago
At least Debian cannot and will never be bought, will always be there, has an army of contributors (some of them kernel developers), and is basically the only enterprise grade free distribution. Now just add some RHEL/CentOS containers on top where needed and forget about the RH lock-in.
- imglorp 4y ago
  > RHEL/CentOS containers ... RH lock-in So if a non-IP-lawyer reads the redistribution terms of the RH Universal Base Images, there are some very dubious implications in there, such as #22 and #42. https://developers.redhat.com/articles/ubi-faq# Has anyone done a third party analysis of their EULA? My org, an ISV, may need some legal cycles to avoid stepping in this trap. I'd be just fine avoiding UBI because of that, but there are some orgs whose security posture demands only UBI images are allowed in their domain so ISV's may be forced to pay to play.
  - mogwire 4y ago
    #22 and #42 is how they try to prevent people from adding RPMs from mainstream RHEL. I have seen GitHub repos owned by RH employees that have containers files that require you to attach entitlement cert and the Red Hat cdn repo to install additional packages. It doesn’t violate EULA because they aren’t distributing the image. RH knows people will try to abuse the free UBI image and install RPMs they shouldn’t be. I work with Red Hat Partners so I know these rules well.
    - parasense 4y ago
      Yeah, they are base images devoid of copyright/trademark assets like artwork or whatever, and so it goes... just a platform to layer around. Like you wrote the first thing many people want or need, is to layer other RHEL packages, or if the software lacks many dependencies then the ISV just integrates their own software over top, then packages that layer themselves... Meh
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > I'd be just fine avoiding UBI because of that, but there are some orgs whose security posture demands only UBI images are allowed in their domain so ISV's may be forced to pay to play. That seems fine IMO; use free OSs wherever possible, but if customers want RHEL just pass the cost through and let them deal with it.
janejeon 4y ago
I'm completely out of the loop (I only use Debian). What did RH do w/ version 8?
- trynewideas 4y ago
  Eliminated it in favor of a less stable rolling release edition. https://www.zdnet.com/article/centos-linux-8-is-about-to-die-what-do-you-do-next/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/centos-linux-8-is-about-to-die...
- tadbit 4y ago
  CentOS 8 was supposed to be supported into 2029. Approximately a year or so after being released that was changed and would only be supported into 2021. Many people in the CentOS community, even RHEL employees, tried to play it off like they never meant to support it so long, but some time after the announcement they confirmed they did indeed strip away 8 years of the planned support. This burned a lot of people that had already started deploying systems using CentOS 8 into Production. A lot of time and money has been spent by many people, organizations, and companies rectifying this situation.
  - Alupis 4y ago
    Additionally, CentOS has become "CentOS Stream" and no longer is 1:1 with RHEL and considered stable. It's an in-between Fedora (bleeding edge) and RHEL (boring and stable), which means things might change or break, etc... which is sort of the opposite of what your typical CentOS user wanted. Really a missed mark from IBM/RH. This led to several CentOS replacement distros, including Rocky Linux (made by many original CentOS people), AlmaLinux and others. Both Rocky and Alma are supporting 8.x for 10 years, prompting many CentOS users to switch over.
    - sheepdestroyer 4y ago
      As I understand it, this is an incorrect representation of what Stream is. Unfortunately I rarely see this misconception corrected. Stream is only "between" fedora and RedHat until RHEL X.0 is released. For instance, once RHEL 9.0 development branched from fedora 34, Stream 9 became the upstream and just ahead of all further RHEL 9.X releases, and doesn't depend on fedora anymore. Furthermore all Stream rpms undergo the exact same RHEL testing and quality validation chain than proper RHEL packages. As such by using Stream 9, you are arguably receiving the bug fixes that are eventually going into RHEL 9 proper, just in advance a bit. RedHat engineers have argued that keeping up to date would amount to effectively running a faster fixed (less buggy overall) OS than RHEL.
rubyist5eva 4y ago
I just switched to Alma Linux, it was nbd.
lmeyerov 4y ago
Yep. We got burned out on the lies RHEL8 pushed to serious orgs (utilities, gov agencies, etc.) around podman readiness & replaceability over docker. I'm glad people are getting their bonuses and good for docker to have competition, but don't abuse your trusted advisor & monopoly position to mess with societal infrastructure and the admins keeping it going. Before we promoted other OS's for our AI users as a matter of general GPU readiness but were game for supporting RHEL, but now we actively recommend against it as too untrustworthy going forward.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ungamedplayer 4y ago
  I feel you could run docker on rhel 8. How was having an option worse?
  - lmeyerov 4y ago
    What is a few clickthroughs for the owner of a home box or regular co box can be weeks for teams or even a deal breaker in critical envs that are locked down. The money people know where the money comes from when making strategic decisions of what to make easy vs hard. They made docker hard for regulated environments while making their broken competitor built-in and then marketed theirs as a replacement. This incurs all sorts of costs in schedule + $$$ + reliability where teams are pushed to figuring out if podman works in their case ("why wouldn't it?") + when not, start over with an unnecessarily complicated round of change management steps for enabling docker from centos7. RHEL/IBM are allowed to use their trusted OS position to be anti-competitive and overall non-neutral for above-OS layers, and to the clear harm of customer. But I am also allowed to say we shouldn't trust & tolerate such a provider for vendor-neutral infra in regulated environments. Secure infra is important and podman is pushing docker on important areas here, so it's been disappointing to see the one-step-forward two-steps-back.
  - pavon 4y ago
    I spent a fair bit of time trying to move to the podman ecosystem and rootless containers before deciding it wasn't ready for production in RHEL 8. I was used to RHEL being more, well, stable and wasn't expecting them to be pushing premature software (that is Fedora's job), so I was disappointed at the state. I would probably have been more upset if RedHat's misleading marketing had convinced higher-ups like the CTO, and I had to push back against directions from above, but investigating it and rejecting it was solely my decision so it wasn't a big deal.
mekster 4y ago
How is it so different? It's still less bleeding edge than Fedora. It always makes me feel people are making such a big fuss about it being slightly ahead of RHEL than slightly behind which has the benefit of having fixes earlier than RHEL. If you got a problem, you could always pay for RHEL.
rurban 4y ago
Giving up completely on technical competence and using a properly maintained distro? Debian/Ubuntu may be useful for harmless hobby users, but certainly not for anything serious. IMHO Debian and Ubuntu are more harmful than Redhat

by tadbit 4y ago

rjgonza 4y ago

Amen! I share these thoughts and plan of action completely.

geerlingguy 4y ago

For the few systems I upgraded to CentOS 8 back before it was killed, I switched them to Rocky Linux (Alma's also a good choice). I'm still waiting a bit longer to see whether I'll keep my toes in the RHEL-ecosystem-waters, or if I finish moving everything to Ubuntu LTS and Debian.

tadbit 4y ago
I think the work being done with Rocky and Alma linux is great! Many kudos to them. However, I'm worried history will simply repeat itself or RHEL will make downstreaming difficult in some way, which could kill those projects.
- otterley 4y ago
  My understanding is that CentOS as we once knew it (the freely-distributable rebuild of EL 7 and earlier) withered away because its creator and primary maintainer was hired by Red Hat. There was a clear conflict of interest at that point, and Red Hat probably wasn't going to keep paying him to maintain a project in perpetuity that ate into their bottom line. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/centos-project-leader-karanbir-singh-opens-up-on-red-hat-deal/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/centos-project-leader-k... So it's not so much that RHEL tried to strong-arm third-party rebuilders of Enterprise Linux - and I don't think it's in their culture to try - but people involved in these projects are always at risk of being bought out. Volunteering for open source can be a lot of work.

rahen 4y ago

At least Debian cannot and will never be bought, will always be there, has an army of contributors (some of them kernel developers), and is basically the only enterprise grade free distribution. Now just add some RHEL/CentOS containers on top where needed and forget about the RH lock-in.

imglorp 4y ago
> RHEL/CentOS containers ... RH lock-in So if a non-IP-lawyer reads the redistribution terms of the RH Universal Base Images, there are some very dubious implications in there, such as #22 and #42. https://developers.redhat.com/articles/ubi-faq# Has anyone done a third party analysis of their EULA? My org, an ISV, may need some legal cycles to avoid stepping in this trap. I'd be just fine avoiding UBI because of that, but there are some orgs whose security posture demands only UBI images are allowed in their domain so ISV's may be forced to pay to play.
- mogwire 4y ago
  #22 and #42 is how they try to prevent people from adding RPMs from mainstream RHEL. I have seen GitHub repos owned by RH employees that have containers files that require you to attach entitlement cert and the Red Hat cdn repo to install additional packages. It doesn’t violate EULA because they aren’t distributing the image. RH knows people will try to abuse the free UBI image and install RPMs they shouldn’t be. I work with Red Hat Partners so I know these rules well.
  - parasense 4y ago
    Yeah, they are base images devoid of copyright/trademark assets like artwork or whatever, and so it goes... just a platform to layer around. Like you wrote the first thing many people want or need, is to layer other RHEL packages, or if the software lacks many dependencies then the ISV just integrates their own software over top, then packages that layer themselves... Meh
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > I'd be just fine avoiding UBI because of that, but there are some orgs whose security posture demands only UBI images are allowed in their domain so ISV's may be forced to pay to play. That seems fine IMO; use free OSs wherever possible, but if customers want RHEL just pass the cost through and let them deal with it.

janejeon 4y ago

I'm completely out of the loop (I only use Debian). What did RH do w/ version 8?

trynewideas 4y ago
Eliminated it in favor of a less stable rolling release edition. https://www.zdnet.com/article/centos-linux-8-is-about-to-die-what-do-you-do-next/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/centos-linux-8-is-about-to-die...
tadbit 4y ago
CentOS 8 was supposed to be supported into 2029. Approximately a year or so after being released that was changed and would only be supported into 2021. Many people in the CentOS community, even RHEL employees, tried to play it off like they never meant to support it so long, but some time after the announcement they confirmed they did indeed strip away 8 years of the planned support. This burned a lot of people that had already started deploying systems using CentOS 8 into Production. A lot of time and money has been spent by many people, organizations, and companies rectifying this situation.
- Alupis 4y ago
  Additionally, CentOS has become "CentOS Stream" and no longer is 1:1 with RHEL and considered stable. It's an in-between Fedora (bleeding edge) and RHEL (boring and stable), which means things might change or break, etc... which is sort of the opposite of what your typical CentOS user wanted. Really a missed mark from IBM/RH. This led to several CentOS replacement distros, including Rocky Linux (made by many original CentOS people), AlmaLinux and others. Both Rocky and Alma are supporting 8.x for 10 years, prompting many CentOS users to switch over.
  - sheepdestroyer 4y ago
    As I understand it, this is an incorrect representation of what Stream is. Unfortunately I rarely see this misconception corrected. Stream is only "between" fedora and RedHat until RHEL X.0 is released. For instance, once RHEL 9.0 development branched from fedora 34, Stream 9 became the upstream and just ahead of all further RHEL 9.X releases, and doesn't depend on fedora anymore. Furthermore all Stream rpms undergo the exact same RHEL testing and quality validation chain than proper RHEL packages. As such by using Stream 9, you are arguably receiving the bug fixes that are eventually going into RHEL 9 proper, just in advance a bit. RedHat engineers have argued that keeping up to date would amount to effectively running a faster fixed (less buggy overall) OS than RHEL.

rubyist5eva 4y ago

I just switched to Alma Linux, it was nbd.

lmeyerov 4y ago

Yep. We got burned out on the lies RHEL8 pushed to serious orgs (utilities, gov agencies, etc.) around podman readiness & replaceability over docker. I'm glad people are getting their bonuses and good for docker to have competition, but don't abuse your trusted advisor & monopoly position to mess with societal infrastructure and the admins keeping it going. Before we promoted other OS's for our AI users as a matter of general GPU readiness but were game for supporting RHEL, but now we actively recommend against it as too untrustworthy going forward.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ungamedplayer 4y ago
I feel you could run docker on rhel 8. How was having an option worse?
- lmeyerov 4y ago
  What is a few clickthroughs for the owner of a home box or regular co box can be weeks for teams or even a deal breaker in critical envs that are locked down. The money people know where the money comes from when making strategic decisions of what to make easy vs hard. They made docker hard for regulated environments while making their broken competitor built-in and then marketed theirs as a replacement. This incurs all sorts of costs in schedule + $$$ + reliability where teams are pushed to figuring out if podman works in their case ("why wouldn't it?") + when not, start over with an unnecessarily complicated round of change management steps for enabling docker from centos7. RHEL/IBM are allowed to use their trusted OS position to be anti-competitive and overall non-neutral for above-OS layers, and to the clear harm of customer. But I am also allowed to say we shouldn't trust & tolerate such a provider for vendor-neutral infra in regulated environments. Secure infra is important and podman is pushing docker on important areas here, so it's been disappointing to see the one-step-forward two-steps-back.
- pavon 4y ago
  I spent a fair bit of time trying to move to the podman ecosystem and rootless containers before deciding it wasn't ready for production in RHEL 8. I was used to RHEL being more, well, stable and wasn't expecting them to be pushing premature software (that is Fedora's job), so I was disappointed at the state. I would probably have been more upset if RedHat's misleading marketing had convinced higher-ups like the CTO, and I had to push back against directions from above, but investigating it and rejecting it was solely my decision so it wasn't a big deal.

mekster 4y ago

How is it so different? It's still less bleeding edge than Fedora. It always makes me feel people are making such a big fuss about it being slightly ahead of RHEL than slightly behind which has the benefit of having fixes earlier than RHEL. If you got a problem, you could always pay for RHEL.

rurban 4y ago

Giving up completely on technical competence and using a properly maintained distro? Debian/Ubuntu may be useful for harmless hobby users, but certainly not for anything serious. IMHO Debian and Ubuntu are more harmful than Redhat