This marks the end of my willingness to run anything on a redhat product ever again now that they've demonstrated that their commitments are worth nothing in the face of where they want their business to go.
CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
451–460 of 642 posts
Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a silent but relatively big user base of CentOS in HPC and scientific computing. ScientificLinux and CentOS rules all HPC clusters. Clusters are like enterprise servers. Big, monolithic, rarely upgraded. They're upgraded in one big-fell swoop and left to run. There'll be another clone of RHEL since HPC can't accept CentOS Stream as the alternative. The whole infra is too big to move to Debian too. So with tod…
Okay, this is a serious question. For me, not an official RH position. In my time in HPC, nodes were baked with a specific image and then that basically never ever got updates. As I came to that as a sysadmin from other areas, I found that somewhat horrifying, but it seemed pretty universal. Have things changed such that applying patches regularly (like, more often than once a month or so except in emergencies) is a…
The login nodes on our cluster (UChicago) can reach uptimes over a hundred days (which my tmux sessions love).
Seems like the kernel was last updated in May.
$ uname -r -v
3.10.0-1127.8.2.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed May 13 10:45:47 CDTRe: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes this hurts. My use case is specific: I'm a dev but since we're 2 in the IT service with barely any budget I'm also a (modest) sysadmin and they also call me when the printer or the TV doesn't work. So a few years ago when Debian decided to have faster release cycles I migrated all my VM to CentOS: once the OS is installed I don't want to think about it for the next 10 years. I still didn't finish my Windows 7 to…
Before giving up on us just yet, I'd encourage you to check out our developer program for proper RHEL that's free. And I'd stay tuned for announcements that are coming in the first half of 2021 (as mentioned in our FAQ). You might find we've got a program for you: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/faq-centos-stream-updates#Q10
RHEL licensing is really disappointing for the low end. I use CentOS for my home lab / self-hosted development setup and there's no way I would switch to RHEL. It doesn't matter because I don't spend any money, but I'll probably swap to Ubuntu next time I re-build my server.
Here [1] is an example of what I dislike. That page doesn't explain if a subscription is for 1 host or all my hosts and it doesn't explain if it needs to be renewed annually or if I get a perpetual license after the first year of support.
I currently have 11 (extremely light usage) CentOS VMs running, but almost everything is Docker containers. I could likely consolidate it onto a single, bare-metal host if I wanted. It would be worse for me, but I could get a single $800 license instead of $8800 for 11 licenses. It's a moot point though. $800 is already too much for the value I'm getting out of it.
I could use the developer program, but I use an issue tracker to track work I do and I back up the whole system nightly. Technically that's production (to me), and I've seen IBM bait and eviscerate someone for licensing using extremely unethical tactics, so I'll never use something that isn't very explicitly free for production.
I think RHEL is technically superior to Ubuntu, but Ubuntu is a far better product when it comes to support lifecycle, licensing, and support. I can spin up an Ubuntu server and unlimited VMs with the promise of a reasonable lifecycle and the option to click a button and buy support.
Where is that in the RedHat world? If RedHat would have released a product like CentOS Stream, but with RHEL branding and a dead simple way to go from a free, community supported version to a paid, commercially supported version then for people like me it makes sense to be the "beta" tester. I think it's a fair trade. Downtime doesn't have a huge impact on me and I'm willing to spend time bug hunting / reporting bugs.
TLDR; The licensing is a massive hassle and is a terrible value proposition for small users. You're not winning any mindshare unless it's as simple as Ubuntu makes it.
1. https://www.redhat.com/en/store/red-hat-enterprise-linux-ser...
Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
#454What was the point of Red Hat taking over CentOS then? If they're just transparently killing of the "free version of RHEL", that surely won't work in anything but name? There's an obvious need for a 1:1 RHEL clone, and due to the license of all software that RHEL builds on, there's no way IBM or Red Hat can stop people from actually building their own "new CentOS" and many companies and communities have done so in th…
They took it over to kill it, that seems rather obvious. This definitely seems to be an IBM thing even though they said they'd basically leave Redhat alone for the most part and just enjoy pulling it into their sphere of software. So much for that.
Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
#455So CentOS is no longer relevant for production use. I wonder who stands to benefit. I really don't see it driving more sales to RHEL like the execs probably predict.
This definitely seems like a bean counter move to me.
Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but how long before Canonical pull the same move as RedHat? The way i see it, Canonical is trying to build a moat (lastly with Snap). I think I'm going back to Debian for my servers. i wish they add 10 years lts though.
Debian is exactly like CentOS - community driven. The exact same thing could happen there. If you want guaranteed updates backed by a contract, choose Ubuntu or RHEL.
Debian is not yet acquired and seems to never happen near the future, that's big difference.
Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe Scientific Linux can get revived.
Wasn't CentOS "adopted" by RedHat because no one else really wanted to do the work? A revived Scientific Linux could easy suffer the same fate. No one truly want to maintain a RedHat clone for little to no pay, while at the same time dealing request and complaints from companies who wants the benefits of RHEL, but no pay for the development and maintenance works done by RedHat. Realistically it's some bean counter at…
CERN pays?
Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
#458[deleted]
Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fedora is the Fedora version of RHEL. Are you saying that CentOS Stream is going to be directly equivalent to Fedora?
Fedora is (up to) years ahead of RHEL, and periodically forked. CentOS stream is up to a few months ahead of RHEL, and developed from the same Fedora fork that RHEL is.
RHEL isn't strictly a fork of Fedora, it's usually a hybrid of two Fedora versions with some custom work on top.
Re: CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
#460It does not matter if nightlies are more stable than they used to be. It does not matter if nightlies never crash.
If you work in an industry or corporation that is highly security conscious, i.e. that prizes risk mitigation over using the cutting edge or getting to market first above all else, then you won't be able to use nightlies.
Security policy will dictate that you use use a stable versioned release, that the release be vetted through scripts/STIGs, and that the release be installed by Security+ certified and blessed admins.
I just successfully pitched we go with Centos 8 at work. Tomorrow I have to go in and explain why we need to choose Centos 7, or Ubuntu. In my industry this kills Centos, it's as dead as Mr. Praline's Norwegian Blue [1]. I suspect that was IBM's intent all along, though it's only suspicion.