12 ms·

There are so many alternatives to CentOS and RHEL that their absence is inconsequential.

by authun 2y ago

major505 2y ago
Just curious. What are you guys using in place of centos? This days, ny servers are all debian or ubuntu server based.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  CentOS Stream
- RedShift1 2y ago
  AlmaLinux user here, happy with it, everything works.
  - dfedbeef 2y ago
    +1 Alma is great. I've interacted less with Rocky but both projects have great teams behind them, and both have a clear mission and promise to their users.
    - gepiti 2y ago
      +2 The transition was very smooth
- justinclift 2y ago
  Debian 12, after a period of using Ubuntu that ended when Canonical decided to put advertising in the friggin cli. Oh, and pushing snap, but the advertising is what really nailed it for me. ;)
  - Algent 2y ago
    I realy like debian but is there any equivalent to yum ? It did some really nice advanced stuff I don't think you can replicate with apt. The shell mode avoided me some really big trouble several times (erlang updates often made me uninstall anything using it on update). Current job doesn't give me many chances to use linux rn so I'm a bit out of touch. Recently took a look at rocky and it felt like a centos. also tried ubuntu but I recall I had to remove some ads package yeah.
    - Wheaties466 2y ago
      as someone who has used debian and centos 6 +7 extensively apt and dpkg are more than sufficient replacement for yum with centos. i know its a whole environment change but debian really is the logical replacement for a centos style deployment. I would love to be able to comment on rocky linux but i havent used that quite yet.
    - justinclift 2y ago
      Hmmm, I've just been using apt and the dpkg-* tools (ie dpkg-query), and for my uses it's been fine. :)
    - acatton 2y ago
      Funnily enough, years ago, I migrated from Debian as my daily driver to (at the time) "Fedora Core" on my desktop. My first question was "what's the replacement for aptitude", and people pointed me to "yum shell". It was not as good, but I got used to it, and went with it. If you run "aptitude" on debian, without any argument, you end up in a TUI, you can use it to install or remove packages from your system, and then see the "preview" of the change, and apply/cancel the change. The same way people use "yum shell". I'm used to new "dnf shell", so I don't miss aptitude anymore, but I think aptitude is what you're looking for.
      - Algent 2y ago
        Interesting, in my head aptitude was an ubuntu thing so I never tried in debian. Thanks for the tip. I don't have anything against apt, it's just specific edge cases when it really saved me massive headaches by being able to remove and add during same change without having to remove all apps depending on it.
        Sesse__ 2y ago
        “apt install foo+ bar-” will install foo and remove bar, in one operation.
  - candiddevmike 2y ago
    > put advertising in the friggin cli. And the logs. I think it's every 30 minutes or so that "buy Ubuntu advantage" gets logged, you have to disable a systemd timer to get rid of it.
- e1g 2y ago
  RHEL is free for up to 16 systems (physical or VMs). For CI, you can run Rocky/Alma to ensure continuous compatibility if you grow past 16 beefy VMs.
  - BSDobelix 2y ago
    >RHEL is free for up to 16 systems If they don't change their mind, i would not build my business on a promise made by IBM ;)
    - eraser215 2y ago
      But you'll build your business on software you get for free on the internet with absolutely no commitment behind it?
      - BSDobelix 2y ago
        >absolutely no commitment behind it? I think commitment to your baby (your project) is far more morally superior than commitment to just making your stakeholders happy...no? BTW: I buy Github DVDs, I don't load it from the "Internet".
        dralley 2y ago
        Until they have an actual baby and don't have free time to spend maintaining large projects for free.
        BSDobelix 2y ago
        >to spend maintaining large projects for free. What is your point, anyway? That all of Debian will have a baby? Or that all of ArchLinux gets impregnated at once? Big projects are usually not led by a single person....oh whait...linux is, and now Linus cannot have sex anymore, thank you OP.
- KronisLV 2y ago
  Some people have actually had good luck with Oracle Linux but that’s very much an individual (or corporate) choice to consider. Aside from that, Rocky Linux also seems like a great choice for many: https://rockylinux.org/ https://rockylinux.org/ Some also say that AlmaLinux is pretty good: https://almalinux.org/ https://almalinux.org/ Personally, I found RPM distros to be quite stable but have largely moved over to Ubuntu LTS for servers (technically Debian also has a LTS release, but it’s not as mainstream) and Linux Mint locally (largely Ubuntu without focus on snaps and the Cinnamon desktop is pleasant), it’s been working pretty well so far. Then again, I run most software in Docker containers, so thankfully underlying OS changes usually aren’t too bad for me to deal with.
  - o999 2y ago
    Worth mentioning that Rocky is made to match RHEL bug-to-bug, so an equal alternative to CentOS, Rocky's maintainer is former engineer in CentOS team. Alma independently manage their updates though, started by Cloudlinux, who are also experts in maintaining EL distros
  - BSDobelix 2y ago
    >Some people have actually had good luck with Oracle Linux but that’s very much an individual (or corporate) choice to consider. Jup for enterprise, OracleLinux it is. I don't like Oracle as any normal person would, but they never did some shady stuff with their Linux, it even works perfectly on a Raspberry PI.
- Timber-6539 2y ago
  As soon as Red Hat made the EOL announcement for CentOS I moved to Almalinux.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Which is probably the right answer (or Rocky) if you're set on having CentOS like it was before the team was acquired by Red Hat (which frankly didn't change the situation as much as some folks assume it did).
- creshal 2y ago
  We're trying to migrate everything we can to Debian.
- fx1994 2y ago
  Switched to Debian since one of services we use is Debian supported only so it was a logical choice. Some clients are still requesting Oracle or RHEL but we are pushing towards Debian. It was a nice ride with CentOS.
bayindirh 2y ago
There are whole niche ecosystems started on Scientific Linux and moved to CentOS over the last decade. A change like this for thousands of bare metal machines, is not inconsequential. The complete inverse is true, in fact.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  Debian was always there, they deserve what they get. I'm saying this as someone who fought tooth and nail to migrate to Debian instead of Scientific in 2010 because you can't ever trust a for profit company. But that was too hard, and what would a grad student know about the real world anyway, so here we are.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    I daily drive Debian close to 20 years. We'd prefer to have Debian on board, too. However this is where we're now and what we have to go through. > they deserve what they get. Why the anger though?
  - vetinari 2y ago
    Debian has relatively short support. Centos 7 was released in 2014 and the support ends next week. Debian 10 was released in 2019 and the support also ends next week.
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      However, you can release-upgrade a Debian installation in five minutes or less, without any big issues cropping up. Also, you can re-install a cattle worker node in 10 minutes or less, from power on.
      - eraser215 2y ago
        What breaking changes do those upgrades introduce? Is there any compatibility guide?
jacobyoder 2y ago
Some of us are forced by edict/policy to RHEL-only. I'm doing work for a client whose IT dept requires it, because it's all they 'support'. Their 'support' largely consists of a) giving ridiculously small and unchangeable /home and /usr partition sizes, b) randomly logging in at unannounced times to add more logging and monitoring tools in to /home and /usr (then rebooting, also unannounced), c) sending sporadic emails telling us to clean up our system because we are dangerously low on drive space in /home and /usr. Got a message the other day stating that they power down our machine in 2 days unless we freed up drive space because 'low drive space can impact system availability and security'. Powering it down also impacts availability, but that point seemed lost on them. EDIT: Realizing now that ... our RHEL 7 will expire at end of month. We've had 0 communication from them about this. Annoyed because when I'd requested this machine back in 2021, asking for RHEL 8, I was told "we don't officially support that", and now we're going in to EOL territory because of RHEL 7. I'm expecting an "hair on fire" email in early July indicating our machines will be shut down shortly without an immediate upgrade, that we will be forced to do ourselves (because upgrades fall outside 'support').
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  That all sounds like a reason to polish up the resume.
  - away271828 2y ago
    Sort of does. Can't imagine it's a typical experience and makes me wonder what's so unusual in this case. There are always bad experiences with support but usually systematic tire fires indicate some other issues.
  - jacobyoder 2y ago
    Only 5% of my work - I don't deal with them but a few times per year. I'm constantly confounded by how difficult they make relatively simple things, compared to other clients/projects I work with. But... this is dealing with state government. There are definitely sharp people that work in state govt - not dumping on all of them. But... this dept's incentives don't typically align with most others, and there's generally little that can be done about it. My eyes water when I see what my project is required to pay for this, relative to the 'support' we get.
ghaff 2y ago
There are a ton of perfectly good Linux distros out there--many with some type of support available. The thing with CentOS was that, especially latterly after the CentOS team was acquired by Red Hat, many saw CentOS--as a downstream rebuild from RHEL sources, albeit with a different build system--as a semi-supported version of RHEL for free. For people who don't want CentOS Stream, i.e. basically the nightly RHEL builds, the lack of having a versioned CentOS mirroring RHEL versions coming out of Red Hat (for about the last 10 years) puts them in somewhat uncharted waters even if they could pick one of the RHEL alternatives and "probably" be fine.
EasyMark 2y ago
Depends on if you have a heavy base using it. It’s not inconsequential then.

There are so many alternatives to CentOS and RHEL that their absence is inconsequential.

by authun 2y ago

There are so many alternatives to CentOS and RHEL that their absence is inconsequential.

major505 2y ago

Just curious. What are you guys using in place of centos? This days, ny servers are all debian or ubuntu server based.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
CentOS Stream
RedShift1 2y ago
AlmaLinux user here, happy with it, everything works.
- dfedbeef 2y ago
  +1 Alma is great. I've interacted less with Rocky but both projects have great teams behind them, and both have a clear mission and promise to their users.
  - gepiti 2y ago
    +2 The transition was very smooth
justinclift 2y ago
Debian 12, after a period of using Ubuntu that ended when Canonical decided to put advertising in the friggin cli. Oh, and pushing snap, but the advertising is what really nailed it for me. ;)
- Algent 2y ago
  I realy like debian but is there any equivalent to yum ? It did some really nice advanced stuff I don't think you can replicate with apt. The shell mode avoided me some really big trouble several times (erlang updates often made me uninstall anything using it on update). Current job doesn't give me many chances to use linux rn so I'm a bit out of touch. Recently took a look at rocky and it felt like a centos. also tried ubuntu but I recall I had to remove some ads package yeah.
  - Wheaties466 2y ago
    as someone who has used debian and centos 6 +7 extensively apt and dpkg are more than sufficient replacement for yum with centos. i know its a whole environment change but debian really is the logical replacement for a centos style deployment. I would love to be able to comment on rocky linux but i havent used that quite yet.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    Hmmm, I've just been using apt and the dpkg-* tools (ie dpkg-query), and for my uses it's been fine. :)
  - acatton 2y ago
    Funnily enough, years ago, I migrated from Debian as my daily driver to (at the time) "Fedora Core" on my desktop. My first question was "what's the replacement for aptitude", and people pointed me to "yum shell". It was not as good, but I got used to it, and went with it. If you run "aptitude" on debian, without any argument, you end up in a TUI, you can use it to install or remove packages from your system, and then see the "preview" of the change, and apply/cancel the change. The same way people use "yum shell". I'm used to new "dnf shell", so I don't miss aptitude anymore, but I think aptitude is what you're looking for.
    - Algent 2y ago
      Interesting, in my head aptitude was an ubuntu thing so I never tried in debian. Thanks for the tip. I don't have anything against apt, it's just specific edge cases when it really saved me massive headaches by being able to remove and add during same change without having to remove all apps depending on it.
      - Sesse__ 2y ago
        “apt install foo+ bar-” will install foo and remove bar, in one operation.
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  > put advertising in the friggin cli. And the logs. I think it's every 30 minutes or so that "buy Ubuntu advantage" gets logged, you have to disable a systemd timer to get rid of it.
e1g 2y ago
RHEL is free for up to 16 systems (physical or VMs). For CI, you can run Rocky/Alma to ensure continuous compatibility if you grow past 16 beefy VMs.
- BSDobelix 2y ago
  >RHEL is free for up to 16 systems If they don't change their mind, i would not build my business on a promise made by IBM ;)
  - eraser215 2y ago
    But you'll build your business on software you get for free on the internet with absolutely no commitment behind it?
    - BSDobelix 2y ago
      >absolutely no commitment behind it? I think commitment to your baby (your project) is far more morally superior than commitment to just making your stakeholders happy...no? BTW: I buy Github DVDs, I don't load it from the "Internet".
      - dralley 2y ago
        Until they have an actual baby and don't have free time to spend maintaining large projects for free.
        BSDobelix 2y ago
        >to spend maintaining large projects for free. What is your point, anyway? That all of Debian will have a baby? Or that all of ArchLinux gets impregnated at once? Big projects are usually not led by a single person....oh whait...linux is, and now Linus cannot have sex anymore, thank you OP.
KronisLV 2y ago
Some people have actually had good luck with Oracle Linux but that’s very much an individual (or corporate) choice to consider. Aside from that, Rocky Linux also seems like a great choice for many: https://rockylinux.org/ https://rockylinux.org/ Some also say that AlmaLinux is pretty good: https://almalinux.org/ https://almalinux.org/ Personally, I found RPM distros to be quite stable but have largely moved over to Ubuntu LTS for servers (technically Debian also has a LTS release, but it’s not as mainstream) and Linux Mint locally (largely Ubuntu without focus on snaps and the Cinnamon desktop is pleasant), it’s been working pretty well so far. Then again, I run most software in Docker containers, so thankfully underlying OS changes usually aren’t too bad for me to deal with.
- o999 2y ago
  Worth mentioning that Rocky is made to match RHEL bug-to-bug, so an equal alternative to CentOS, Rocky's maintainer is former engineer in CentOS team. Alma independently manage their updates though, started by Cloudlinux, who are also experts in maintaining EL distros
- BSDobelix 2y ago
  >Some people have actually had good luck with Oracle Linux but that’s very much an individual (or corporate) choice to consider. Jup for enterprise, OracleLinux it is. I don't like Oracle as any normal person would, but they never did some shady stuff with their Linux, it even works perfectly on a Raspberry PI.
Timber-6539 2y ago
As soon as Red Hat made the EOL announcement for CentOS I moved to Almalinux.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Which is probably the right answer (or Rocky) if you're set on having CentOS like it was before the team was acquired by Red Hat (which frankly didn't change the situation as much as some folks assume it did).
creshal 2y ago
We're trying to migrate everything we can to Debian.
fx1994 2y ago
Switched to Debian since one of services we use is Debian supported only so it was a logical choice. Some clients are still requesting Oracle or RHEL but we are pushing towards Debian. It was a nice ride with CentOS.

bayindirh 2y ago

There are whole niche ecosystems started on Scientific Linux and moved to CentOS over the last decade. A change like this for thousands of bare metal machines, is not inconsequential. The complete inverse is true, in fact.

llm_trw 2y ago
Debian was always there, they deserve what they get. I'm saying this as someone who fought tooth and nail to migrate to Debian instead of Scientific in 2010 because you can't ever trust a for profit company. But that was too hard, and what would a grad student know about the real world anyway, so here we are.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  I daily drive Debian close to 20 years. We'd prefer to have Debian on board, too. However this is where we're now and what we have to go through. > they deserve what they get. Why the anger though?
- vetinari 2y ago
  Debian has relatively short support. Centos 7 was released in 2014 and the support ends next week. Debian 10 was released in 2019 and the support also ends next week.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    However, you can release-upgrade a Debian installation in five minutes or less, without any big issues cropping up. Also, you can re-install a cattle worker node in 10 minutes or less, from power on.
    - eraser215 2y ago
      What breaking changes do those upgrades introduce? Is there any compatibility guide?

jacobyoder 2y ago

Some of us are forced by edict/policy to RHEL-only. I'm doing work for a client whose IT dept requires it, because it's all they 'support'. Their 'support' largely consists of a) giving ridiculously small and unchangeable /home and /usr partition sizes, b) randomly logging in at unannounced times to add more logging and monitoring tools in to /home and /usr (then rebooting, also unannounced), c) sending sporadic emails telling us to clean up our system because we are dangerously low on drive space in /home and /usr. Got a message the other day stating that they power down our machine in 2 days unless we freed up drive space because 'low drive space can impact system availability and security'. Powering it down also impacts availability, but that point seemed lost on them. EDIT: Realizing now that ... our RHEL 7 will expire at end of month. We've had 0 communication from them about this. Annoyed because when I'd requested this machine back in 2021, asking for RHEL 8, I was told "we don't officially support that", and now we're going in to EOL territory because of RHEL 7. I'm expecting an "hair on fire" email in early July indicating our machines will be shut down shortly without an immediate upgrade, that we will be forced to do ourselves (because upgrades fall outside 'support').

lenerdenator 2y ago
That all sounds like a reason to polish up the resume.
- away271828 2y ago
  Sort of does. Can't imagine it's a typical experience and makes me wonder what's so unusual in this case. There are always bad experiences with support but usually systematic tire fires indicate some other issues.
- jacobyoder 2y ago
  Only 5% of my work - I don't deal with them but a few times per year. I'm constantly confounded by how difficult they make relatively simple things, compared to other clients/projects I work with. But... this is dealing with state government. There are definitely sharp people that work in state govt - not dumping on all of them. But... this dept's incentives don't typically align with most others, and there's generally little that can be done about it. My eyes water when I see what my project is required to pay for this, relative to the 'support' we get.

ghaff 2y ago

There are a ton of perfectly good Linux distros out there--many with some type of support available. The thing with CentOS was that, especially latterly after the CentOS team was acquired by Red Hat, many saw CentOS--as a downstream rebuild from RHEL sources, albeit with a different build system--as a semi-supported version of RHEL for free. For people who don't want CentOS Stream, i.e. basically the nightly RHEL builds, the lack of having a versioned CentOS mirroring RHEL versions coming out of Red Hat (for about the last 10 years) puts them in somewhat uncharted waters even if they could pick one of the RHEL alternatives and "probably" be fine.

EasyMark 2y ago

Depends on if you have a heavy base using it. It’s not inconsequential then.