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Why should I use this over, say, Ubuntu or Linux Mint? What’s the unique selling point? And what’s the target audience besides Linux enthusiasts who still distr

Why should I use this over, say, Ubuntu or Linux Mint? What’s the unique selling point? And what’s the target audience besides Linux enthusiasts who still distrohop?

rnd0 4y ago
I think the target audience is people who want RHEL but don't want to pay for it -same as almalinux?
NoahKAndrews 4y ago
This is an equivalent to CentOS, now that there won't be any more CentOS major releases besides CentOS Stream.
- carlwgeorge 4y ago
  CentOS Stream still has major releases. It's not actually a rolling release.
bubblethink 4y ago
It's a downstream rebuild of RHEL 9. The release notes page tragically fails to mentions that. Chalk that up to failures of trademark law.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
10 years of support for $0. If you need to set up a box and forget that it exists (unless hardware breaks), this is what you use.
_micheee 4y ago
In case you don't intend distrohopping you use this for being "an open-source enterprise operating system designed to be 100% bug-for-bug compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux®." So its actually for people trying to replace CentOS which RedHat decided to drop :)
ranger207 4y ago
It's a server distro (unlike Mint) in the Red Hat family (unlike Ubuntu). As a server-oriented distribution it has options for installing with a bare minimum of packages, including no GUI, and typically has longer support cycles. As a Red Hat derivative, it generally features more recent versions of core Linux userland things like systemd, since Red Hat employs a lot of the developers of those features. In comparison to Ubuntu it also has far less snap packages, which some people like because snaps have various problems in their current implementation. The target audience is people who used to use Centos, before Red Hat ended Centos 8 years early and moved it to a rolling release schedule. Its primary competitors in the server-focused Red Hat derivatives are Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself, which is paid; Centos Stream, which is rolling release; or Alma Linux, which is, currently, basically the same distro due to how recent the Centos debacle was, but could diverge in the future.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
orthoxerox 4y ago
It's off-brand RHEL. There's some server software that isn't compatible with any other distro. So if you wanted to run it, you either had to pay for a RHEL license, or run it on CentOS, which was the original official off-brand version of RHEL. Then CentOS was killed by IBM/RedHat and reborn as the beta distro for the next RHEL release. Rocky Linux and Alma Linux were created to fill this niche. For example, you can run your production server on RHEL, but run your test and dev machines on Rocky while being reasonably sure that there won't be any compatibility issues.
- carlwgeorge 4y ago
  If you pay for RHEL in production, you can get free RHEL for test/dev/etc via the "developer subscription for teams" program.
cturner 4y ago
Driver compatibility with redhat. Niche hardware like stack bypass network cards, packet capture cards, fpga cards will tend to have drivers issued for redhat, but not always for anything else. By using rocky/alma, you improve your odds to dodge hassle adapting the driver packs to other linux distros. Net booting. Distros vary in how awkward it is to get stripped setups set up for net booting. My experience is that the redhat world distros are easier for this than the debian world.
- sliken 4y ago
  I've setup 100s of PXE boot servers, including CentOS, Rocky, and Ubuntu over the last 10 years or so. I've not noticed any difference between RHEL derived and Debian derived. On the redhat side they are called kickstart files, and on the debian side pre-seed. Both are a bit wonky and hard to debug before you have a full boot, but both seem to work fine.

Why should I use this over, say, Ubuntu or Linux Mint? What’s the unique selling point? And what’s the target audience besides Linux enthusiasts who still distrohop?

rnd0 4y ago

I think the target audience is people who want RHEL but don't want to pay for it -same as almalinux?

NoahKAndrews 4y ago

This is an equivalent to CentOS, now that there won't be any more CentOS major releases besides CentOS Stream.

carlwgeorge 4y ago
CentOS Stream still has major releases. It's not actually a rolling release.

bubblethink 4y ago

It's a downstream rebuild of RHEL 9. The release notes page tragically fails to mentions that. Chalk that up to failures of trademark law.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

5e92cb50239222b 4y ago

10 years of support for $0. If you need to set up a box and forget that it exists (unless hardware breaks), this is what you use.

_micheee 4y ago

In case you don't intend distrohopping you use this for being "an open-source enterprise operating system designed to be 100% bug-for-bug compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux®." So its actually for people trying to replace CentOS which RedHat decided to drop :)

ranger207 4y ago

It's a server distro (unlike Mint) in the Red Hat family (unlike Ubuntu). As a server-oriented distribution it has options for installing with a bare minimum of packages, including no GUI, and typically has longer support cycles. As a Red Hat derivative, it generally features more recent versions of core Linux userland things like systemd, since Red Hat employs a lot of the developers of those features. In comparison to Ubuntu it also has far less snap packages, which some people like because snaps have various problems in their current implementation. The target audience is people who used to use Centos, before Red Hat ended Centos 8 years early and moved it to a rolling release schedule. Its primary competitors in the server-focused Red Hat derivatives are Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself, which is paid; Centos Stream, which is rolling release; or Alma Linux, which is, currently, basically the same distro due to how recent the Centos debacle was, but could diverge in the future.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

orthoxerox 4y ago

It's off-brand RHEL. There's some server software that isn't compatible with any other distro. So if you wanted to run it, you either had to pay for a RHEL license, or run it on CentOS, which was the original official off-brand version of RHEL. Then CentOS was killed by IBM/RedHat and reborn as the beta distro for the next RHEL release. Rocky Linux and Alma Linux were created to fill this niche. For example, you can run your production server on RHEL, but run your test and dev machines on Rocky while being reasonably sure that there won't be any compatibility issues.

carlwgeorge 4y ago
If you pay for RHEL in production, you can get free RHEL for test/dev/etc via the "developer subscription for teams" program.

cturner 4y ago

Driver compatibility with redhat. Niche hardware like stack bypass network cards, packet capture cards, fpga cards will tend to have drivers issued for redhat, but not always for anything else. By using rocky/alma, you improve your odds to dodge hassle adapting the driver packs to other linux distros. Net booting. Distros vary in how awkward it is to get stripped setups set up for net booting. My experience is that the redhat world distros are easier for this than the debian world.

sliken 4y ago
I've setup 100s of PXE boot servers, including CentOS, Rocky, and Ubuntu over the last 10 years or so. I've not noticed any difference between RHEL derived and Debian derived. On the redhat side they are called kickstart files, and on the debian side pre-seed. Both are a bit wonky and hard to debug before you have a full boot, but both seem to work fine.