Live data from Hacker News

Centos.rip

centos.rip

81–90 of 144 posts

Re: Centos.rip

#81

Not knowing much about Linux distros, can anyone explain the popularity of CentOS to me? I mean, having used it only a few times, my impression of CentOS is "a Linux with lots of horribly outdated software, in the name of compatibility and well-testedness". Eg when I used it last, the PHP version it shipped with was 8 years old. Now, I understand the appeal of that to certain super risk averse enterprises who value s…

Contrary to some of the other replies here, I agree with you that there is no point in running CentOS on its own merits. Those looking for old software could just use Debian or Ubuntu LTS. But there is an important use case you're leaving out: Developing and testing software for running on RHEL. You probably don't need to purchase RHEL licenses with enterprise support just for running on your development machines.

The point of CentOS is (or was) not to just be a free, stable, rpm-based linux distribution. The point was to be bug-for-bug compatible with RHEL.

Re: Centos.rip

#82

This should really be called RIP RedHat tbh. They've just shot themselves in both feet.

I disagree, Redhat is not going anywhere anytime soon. FOSS is a funny thing because people seem to get more upset about things they were handed for free than things they pay for. Why should your entire *aaS stack be composed of free software of which you make money off of? How much money did anyone reading this donate to CentOS when they were separate from Redhat? Redhat bought the CentOS team because their own community refused to support their work. Think about that...you get what you give. People are really just upset they will no longer get free Redhat (which is what CentOS is).

Re: Centos.rip

#84

Not knowing much about Linux distros, can anyone explain the popularity of CentOS to me? I mean, having used it only a few times, my impression of CentOS is "a Linux with lots of horribly outdated software, in the name of compatibility and well-testedness". Eg when I used it last, the PHP version it shipped with was 8 years old. Now, I understand the appeal of that to certain super risk averse enterprises who value s…

The main reason I use it for work is that software we buy (and is crucial to our business) tends to be only or best supported on CentOS/RHEL. The reason I chose CentOS over RHEL is that we don't have a large number of servers, so I'm guessing I would get fairly worthless support from RH even if I paid for it.

Re: Centos.rip

#85

This strikes me as an infantile response to a sensible business move. We need to grow up, realize that the free lunch is over, and pay for what we value. And developers, including large companies, need to stop coddling us by offering us their best work for free. Edit: "We" includes me; I should pay for more software too (not that I use any commercial software illegally; I only mean choosing paid products over free on…

What about companies like mine, that run their own servers, to do stuff that is a legal requirement, but don't have money to pay RHEL?

Re: Centos.rip

#86
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, wow. I'm running CentOS 8 on my home server. Anyone have any recomendations for a good, stable, home server OS?

debian-stable amd64

Any Ubuntu LTS version is solid.

Switch to the LTS kernel as well if you can, i.e. if your hardware does not need the HWE (Hardware Enablement) versions. The HWE kernels are mostly for newish laptops anyway and proper server hardware shouldn't need it.

Re: Centos.rip

#87

Not knowing much about Linux distros, can anyone explain the popularity of CentOS to me? I mean, having used it only a few times, my impression of CentOS is "a Linux with lots of horribly outdated software, in the name of compatibility and well-testedness". Eg when I used it last, the PHP version it shipped with was 8 years old. Now, I understand the appeal of that to certain super risk averse enterprises who value s…

One of the main use cases for CentOS is situations where you need to run proprietary third-party software that the vendor only supports on RHEL, which is unfortunately common in the enterprise space. CentOS is (well... was) intended to be a fully binary-compatible rebuild of RHEL (bugs and all), which provides a way of running this proprietary software without also needing to pay for and maintain licenses for the host OS.

Re: Centos.rip

#89

Not knowing much about Linux distros, can anyone explain the popularity of CentOS to me? I mean, having used it only a few times, my impression of CentOS is "a Linux with lots of horribly outdated software, in the name of compatibility and well-testedness". Eg when I used it last, the PHP version it shipped with was 8 years old. Now, I understand the appeal of that to certain super risk averse enterprises who value s…

I think one of the main reasons it's still used is that the enormously popular cPanel/WHM requires CentOS or RHEL. It's a line of software that does system admin for you, which takes care of a lot of the PITA parts of CentOS.

Not that I recommend CentOS, I prefer Ubuntu, but I think that explains the main appeal, at least among web hosting services.

Re: Centos.rip

#90
post #29

This should really be called RIP RedHat tbh. They've just shot themselves in both feet.

Why the hell do huge companies spend tons to acquire things and then kill them? This seems to happen more in computing than other industries. You don't see shipping companies buying completely functional container ships so they can park them out in the middle of the ocean and dynamite a hole in the hull and watch them go glug glug glug for the lulz.

I doubt Red Hat spent any money at all on acquiring CentOS. The OS was literally just Red Hat Enterprise Linux with the logos removed and without the subscription fee. RH probably just promised to help maintain it and provide infrastructure.

The folks who created CentOS didn't do it as a business. It was created because they wanted it to exist.

Post reply on HN