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Fedora CoreOS, Red Hat CoreOS, and the future of Container Linux

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Re: Fedora CoreOS, Red Hat CoreOS, and the future of Container Linux

#42
post #19

This is exactly what I thought would happen when I switched off of CoreOS earlier this year. I recently switched back[0] since according to their blog post[1] Container Linux would live and not be replaced by their Atomic project... I thought I was a fool for overreacting. I don't want OpenShift, it looks like a bloated clusterfuck. I don't want Atomic either -- Container Linux had all the pieces I needed and not muc…

Chris from Kinvolk here. Flatcar Linux is generally available and we are committed to keeping it as a drop-in replacement for Container Linux for the long-term. We were excited about the idea of CoreOS when it was announced in 2013 and think it's a project worthy of sustaining. Happy to answer questions about it.

Thanks for mentioning this, it looks cool.

Link, for those curious: https://www.flatcar-linux.org/

Re: Fedora CoreOS, Red Hat CoreOS, and the future of Container Linux

#43
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenShift is really garbage. Everything red hat adds just makes it worse, and it's a lot slower. The installer is absurdly slow also.

I am worried that I'm shitting on it without using it, but every time I even take a look at the documentation, I just can't stomach it. There's so much happening, all over the place, and it all looks like it was created to be composable, but it seems very non-optional (as in you need to learn 4 OpenShift things before you can do the thing you wanted to do). Maybe there's someone out there that loves working with it a…

I am currently moving all of my infrastructure to OpenShift and I love it - and I chose it after carefully evaluating the alternatives.

It's Kubernetes plus a PaaS platform that takes care of the annoying parts - deploying a cluster (using Ansible), container builds, triggers, deployments, a nice UI... Couldn't be happier.

Red Hat is a major Kubernetes contributor and OpenShift is barely lagging behind upstream k8s. It feels very polished and the documentation - while a bit overwhelming at times - is extremely helpful and extensive. Instead of forking Kubernetes, they only ever add new functionality while simultaneously upstreaming it. For example, the Kubernetes RBAC mechanism was contributed by Red Hat.

Re: Fedora CoreOS, Red Hat CoreOS, and the future of Container Linux

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO OpenShift is RedHat's attempt to embrace extend and extinguish vanilla Kubernetes because it threatens their Enterprise OS domination. The host OS for Kubernetes clusters is mostly irrelevant. It's like Kubernetes... forked from it, but adds all this other shit while they continue to just say it is Kubernetes under the hood. Technically true, but once you go to the OpenShift you're pretty much locked into RedHat'…

OpenShift predates Kubernetes by a bit, and IMO they operate at different levels (OpenShift is "deeper" and overlaps in some spots with Kubernetes). Also, I'm just about 100% sure no one is stupid/brave enough to challenge Kubernetes' current dominance in the container orchestration space right now. Kubernetes is complete enough and not-bad enough to be the defacto choice right now, and I doubt much will change -- pl…

OpenShift is Kubernetes. A few years ago, they realized that Kubernetes is the future and rebuilt their product on top of it.

Re: Fedora CoreOS, Red Hat CoreOS, and the future of Container Linux

#46
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I'll 2nd that. Ansible is immensely pragmatic and capable. Been very happy with it.

It's slow and hard to debug :( (at least in my experience - setting up OpenStack with it) I used to prefer Chef, but then with CoreOS the dream started to come true, just pack up everything in a container, and 12-factor configure it and that's it, and now I just can't wait for k8s to eat the world, and we'll be back full circle with helm instead of yum/apt.

Red Hat uses Ansible to set up the Kubernetes/OpenShift cluster itself.

Re: Fedora CoreOS, Red Hat CoreOS, and the future of Container Linux

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does Alpine Linux provide Transactional Updates?

Try NixOS for something that has something close to transactional updates.

Wow it looks pretty neat. NixOps looks also really cool, you can deploy in VirtualBox and to the cloud. Reminds me of the old Hashicorp Otto.

Re: Fedora CoreOS, Red Hat CoreOS, and the future of Container Linux

#48

You mightwant check Alpine or ArchLinux. They are fast, reliable and updated regularly.

In my experience Arch Linux isn't that reliable. I had a few packages which where broken for weeks and I couldn't manage to downgrade them due to the rolling-release nature.

With Fedora there are less feature updates and I can still go back to a previous release. And if I really need the cutting edge, I can cherry-pick packages from Rawhide.

Re: Fedora CoreOS, Red Hat CoreOS, and the future of Container Linux

#49

This is exactly what I thought would happen when I switched off of CoreOS earlier this year. I recently switched back[0] since according to their blog post[1] Container Linux would live and not be replaced by their Atomic project... I thought I was a fool for overreacting. I don't want OpenShift, it looks like a bloated clusterfuck. I don't want Atomic either -- Container Linux had all the pieces I needed and not muc…

Happily running OpenShift Origin on top of CentOS.

> What does everyone else use for their server distros? Is debian the way to go? Ubuntu seems bloated but maybe I just don't know enough about the fat that is cut out of Ubuntu Server? CentOS and Fedora are stable but they seem like they update too slowly, is my assumption wrong?

CentOS/RHEL stability is exactly the reason why I use it. Red Hat spends a lot of money on quality assurance, and it shows. It's a very different experience than Ubuntu, which has a lot more breakage.

The Kubernetes/OpenShift packaging is mostly independent of the host operating system. My applications inside the containers mostly run on Fedora, CentOS + Software Collections and even bleeding-edge Ubuntu, but I'm happy to run a stable OS underneath.

CentOS/RHEL 7 moves a lot faster than previous releases, too. They even rebased OpenSSL for 7.4 to get HTTP/2 support, all while maintaining ABI compatibility.

Fedora is - by design - a lot less stable than CentOS/RHEL - it's the fast-moving upstream project.

Re: Fedora CoreOS, Red Hat CoreOS, and the future of Container Linux

#50
post #3

If you have a deployed fleet of CoreOS instances, FlatCar[1] looks like a viable alternative. This article from NewStack gets into the details. [1] https://www.flatcar-linux.org/ [2] https://thenewstack.io/flatcar-linux-the-coreos-operating-sy...

Maintaining an operating system is a massive undertaking. Can Kinvolk guarantee that they will support the distro after Red Hat stops working on it?
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