Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 555 posts

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#141

Post by brandonmenc »

chousuke wrote: post #122
unethical_ban wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, no one should be running a server that long in 2020. I would say a better reason is that while both are Linux distributions, they are distinct dialects and ecosystems. It isn't impossible to switch, but for institutions that have complex infrastructure built around the RHEL world, it is a lot of work to convert.

It's not really about running servers for 10 years. It's about having a platform to build a product on that you can support for 10 years. RHEL software gets old over time, but it's still maintained and compatible with what you started on. Consider an appliance that will be shipped to a literal cave for some mining operation. Do you want to build that on something that you would have to keep refreshing every year, so…

> Consider an appliance that will be shipped to a literal cave

This.

A decade ago I was technical co-founder of a company [0] that made interactive photo booths and I chose CentOS for the OS.

There are some out in the wild still working and powered on 24/7 and not a peep from any of them.

We only ever did a few manual updates early on - after determining that the spotty, expensive cellular wasn't worth wasting on non-security updates - so most of them are running whatever version was out ten years ago.

Rock solid.

[0] https://sooh.com

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#142

Post by dmix »

jpalomaki wrote: post #136
mmrezaie wrote: post #3

I am really interested to know why should anyone go with this when Debian or Ubuntu LTS exist. The two later have not changed their policies in the last decade, and they have a clear path for upgrading. CentOS was always a clear choice for device drivers support, but I never understood the stability claims.

Not an expert, but I’ve understood CentOS was interesting for people who run RedHat for production, but want something free for non-prod hosts.

For me it's always been about stability and the long term support of a 'free' distribution. That has also historically been their bread and butter which got them wide-adoption.

The branding stuff was a plus to the sys-admins and Linux die hards.

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#143

Post by viraptor »

mmrezaie wrote: post #3

I am really interested to know why should anyone go with this when Debian or Ubuntu LTS exist. The two later have not changed their policies in the last decade, and they have a clear path for upgrading. CentOS was always a clear choice for device drivers support, but I never understood the stability claims.

Apart from the long support, RHEL based distros also give you built in selinux support. Apparmor exists, but it's not comparable in features and existing policies.

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#144

Post by geofft »

tmoravec wrote: post #16
mmrezaie wrote: post #3

I am really interested to know why should anyone go with this when Debian or Ubuntu LTS exist. The two later have not changed their policies in the last decade, and they have a clear path for upgrading. CentOS was always a clear choice for device drivers support, but I never understood the stability claims.

Debian offers around three years of support. Ubuntu LTS around five. Both pale in comparison with Red Hat and, by proxy, CentOS.

Debian eLTS offers 7 years: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Extended

That said, if you're really in the position of depending on a free project for over five years of security support, you probably will be totally fine with just ignoring the fact it's out of support. Just keep running Debian 6 for a decade, whatever. The code still runs. Pretend you've patched. Sure, there are probably some vulnerabilities, but you haven't actually looked to see if the project you're actually using right now has patched all the known vulnerabilities, have you?

(Spoiler, it hasn't: https://arxiv.org/abs/0904.4058)

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#145

Post by duxup »

hnarn wrote: post #124

The fact that a majority of the comments are whining about the name really shows you the worst part about open source: the non-contributing but highly entitled part of the community. If you don’t like the name, launch your own CentOS replacement. There’s no better time than now. If there’s one thing this project does not need right now, it’s armchair marketing experts. If you do care about a viable CentOS replacement…

It maybe shouldn't but it always amazes me by how much developers (assuming that is who they are) will subject other developers to the same bikeshedding and minutia type hassles ... that suck for everyone.

It's all grounded human nature I'm sure, but man it is terrible.

We all are frustrated by that behavior ourselves, why do it to other people?

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#146

Post by phoronixrly »

asutekku wrote: post #94
varbhat wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Thinking back to early CentOS days... My cofounder was Rocky McGaugh. He is no longer with us, so as a H/T to him, who never got to see the success that CentOS came to be, I introduce to you...Rocky Linux" — Gregory Kurtzer, Founder of Rocky Linux and Co-founder of CentOS It's written in Repo's README

No matter how good the intentions are, the name is pretty bad.

They should rename it to something like zpermutator.io GNU/Linux. I swear, this thread is peak HN with this name bikeshedding.

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#147

Post by dvt »

nps1 wrote: post #137
hnarn wrote: post #124

The fact that a majority of the comments are whining about the name really shows you the worst part about open source: the non-contributing but highly entitled part of the community. If you don’t like the name, launch your own CentOS replacement. There’s no better time than now. If there’s one thing this project does not need right now, it’s armchair marketing experts. If you do care about a viable CentOS replacement…

Or it just means the name does matter to vast user community. And you are hell bent on not listening to user community and not taking valid criticism.

No, @hnarn is right. And you don't really "get" this until you start maintaining an OSS repo (I speak from experience). For years, I was very critical of Linus Torvalds and his brusque attitude. Then I started a few moderately-popular OSS projects, and the entitled masses started pouring in.

After a while, it's hard to refrain from telling people to just screw off.

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#148

Post by tijuco2 »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #14
mmrezaie wrote: post #3

I am really interested to know why should anyone go with this when Debian or Ubuntu LTS exist. The two later have not changed their policies in the last decade, and they have a clear path for upgrading. CentOS was always a clear choice for device drivers support, but I never understood the stability claims.

I am simply not a fan of Debian/Ubuntu's utilities, with the big one being the package manager (I like yum/dnf way better), but also other things like ufw vs firewalld.

same here

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#149

Post by zdw »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #12
murat124 wrote: post #5

What is the vision for Rocky Linux? A solid, stable, and transparent alternative for production environments, developed by the community for the community. Hence the name Rocky Linux, I suppose? Solid as a rock. Although I'll be inclined to think of it as series of movies. Perhaps even split wood before installing Rocky 5?

I think of Rocky the moose from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Not a confidence-inspiring name. Edit: actually Rocky was the flying squirrel.

And definitely the smarter member of the pair.

Re: Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

#150

Post by taxcoder »

IshKebab wrote: post #92
bserge wrote: post #61

Great, another Linux distro... I am trying to use something , but I just can't. Spending my time fixing problems instead of doing actual work is fun, for a while. Every damn time I start this one laptop with Linux, trying to get away from Windows 10, there's something to fix. Oh, the undervolt is not being applied, time to build the whole thing again. Oh, restart causes it to wank the hard drive indefinitely for some…

I agree it is a problem. I think there are several reasons: 1. It's a mountain of work and loads of people involved are doing it in their limited spare time. 2. It's even more of a mountain of work because Linux developers have to write all the hardware drivers themselves too. On Windows drivers tend to be written by device manufacturers but that rarely happens on Linux because it's very difficult to write closed sou…

1. How others prioritize their time and how limited it is is an interesting call to make. Are you familiar enough with any of the contributors to know how much "spare" time they have and how they use it?

2. See above.

3. I am locked to a Windows desktop for work, but support Centos servers for backups and such. What is wrong with text-based config files? Are GUI checkboxes a better option? They may be more discoverable, but seem to me to be less configurable. Have you read the Unix Haters Handbook? Unix's greatest flaw and greatest strength are its flexibility.

4. I can't speak much to this, but aren't some manufacturers testing on Linux?

Post reply on HN