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Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

news.fnal.gov

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Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#11

Post by rurban »

djha-skin wrote: post #4

All this time I had thought that Rocky Linux was winning the fork war over Alma (in the fight to be the successor to CentOS), but this post might change that with a good chunk of the science community throwing their weight behind Alma. Do we have anyone else in the audience that has any insights over whether Alma is more prevalent over Rocky or is it the other way around? I know I can run Rocky Linux from DigitalOcea…

I have insights.

Alma is done by professionals for professionals (the hosting industry). Those guys were behind CentOS, and are running 70% of the internet.

Rocky is an unpaid community effort.

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#12

Post by dapozza »

rurban wrote: post #11
djha-skin wrote: post #4

All this time I had thought that Rocky Linux was winning the fork war over Alma (in the fight to be the successor to CentOS), but this post might change that with a good chunk of the science community throwing their weight behind Alma. Do we have anyone else in the audience that has any insights over whether Alma is more prevalent over Rocky or is it the other way around? I know I can run Rocky Linux from DigitalOcea…

I have insights. Alma is done by professionals for professionals (the hosting industry). Those guys were behind CentOS, and are running 70% of the internet. Rocky is an unpaid community effort.

No.

Rocky is done by the guy that started CentOS.

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#13

Post by themodelplumber »

darthrupert wrote: post #8
djha-skin wrote: post #4

All this time I had thought that Rocky Linux was winning the fork war over Alma (in the fight to be the successor to CentOS), but this post might change that with a good chunk of the science community throwing their weight behind Alma. Do we have anyone else in the audience that has any insights over whether Alma is more prevalent over Rocky or is it the other way around? I know I can run Rocky Linux from DigitalOcea…

> Alma Having just played through the F.E.A.R. games that name gives me weird feelings.

Having been assigned the name in a creepy religious temple ceremony we are in the same boat

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#14

Post by thiagocsf »

cozzyd wrote: post #3
HexDecOctBin wrote: post #2

> reflecting recent experience What happened? Is this about CentOS's demise?

Yes. It's too bad because they used to support Scientific Linux, but stopped because CentOS was so popular... Anyway, I'm glad I went with Alma over Rocky, albeit for the wrong reasons (my daughter's name is Alma...)

You probably know this, but Alma means “soul” in Portuguese.

Is this why you picked the name? I like it. I went with Ada myself (after Lovelace - wife only found-out why years later).

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#15

Post by dotancohen »

dapozza wrote: post #12
rurban wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have insights. Alma is done by professionals for professionals (the hosting industry). Those guys were behind CentOS, and are running 70% of the internet. Rocky is an unpaid community effort.

No. Rocky is done by the guy that started CentOS.

Is he paid to develop it? Serious question, my CentOS boxes have been running for years and I'm not looking to upgrade so I'm not up to date.

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#16

Post by dotancohen »

djha-skin wrote: post #7
notorandit wrote: post #6

Not really interesting. Without any technical reasoning other than "we want red hat with extra perks".

It's interesting because there's a question in the air right now over what fork of CentOS will be its spiritual successor since it got bought out. Will it be Alma, or Rocky? This post holds in favor of Alma.

As much as it pains me to say it, FOSS devs are a finite resource and it seems that being divided is just as if having been conquered. Neither Rocky nor Alma are progressing at the rate that a CentOS fork with a hostile RH upstream would progress if they were working together and not duplicating efforts.

What is the philosophical schism between the two? Why can't they split the workload on a single distro and reunite the communities?

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#17

Post by 1letterunixname »

I went through the Rocks Cluster cycles in 3, 4, and 5 with SLC and Scientific until those fell by the wayside.

Rocky is the underdog you want to win.

Alma is the leader except in terms of security update latency.

The problem is that Cent 8/9 Stream has quicker critical CVE patches because it's essentially the source and is closer to mirroring RHEL.

It's hard to convince corporate folks to use Alma when Cent is still the "safer" choice technologically and provides continuity even if its governance and lifecycle maybe worse.

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#18

Post by 1letterunixname »

dapozza wrote: post #12
rurban wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have insights. Alma is done by professionals for professionals (the hosting industry). Those guys were behind CentOS, and are running 70% of the internet. Rocky is an unpaid community effort.

No. Rocky is done by the guy that started CentOS.

Correct. Although I don't think Rocky has nearly as much money, staff, or industry support as Alma does.

The other issue is RH gets Cent 8/9 Stream CVE fixes out faster than either Alma or Rocky, at least so far.

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#20

Post by ustrin »

1letterunixname wrote: post #18
dapozza wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Rocky is done by the guy that started CentOS.

Correct. Although I don't think Rocky has nearly as much money, staff, or industry support as Alma does. The other issue is RH gets Cent 8/9 Stream CVE fixes out faster than either Alma or Rocky, at least so far.

> The problem is that Cent 8/9 Stream has quicker critical CVE patches because it's essentially the source and is closer to mirroring RHEL.

This isn't entirely true, at least for embargoed CVEs (so the most critical vulnerabilities). RHEL will always get embargoed patches first. Once RHEL releases the patched packages, Alma/Rocky can rebuild them too. The patches may not be available in Stream yet at this point. This has happened a few times in the past.

Also, there are no advisories for Stream, so it's not always easy to tell if a Stream package includes a patch for a particular CVE. Sometimes you have to go hunting in the changelog to figure it out, as the version numbers don't always match with RHEL's.

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