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What's wrong with enterprise Linux

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Re: What's wrong with enterprise Linux

#131

Post by monkeywork »

pavon wrote: post #50
darkhelmet wrote: post #7

There is another problem that wasn't covered in the article. The 10+ years of stability leads to behaviors and outcomes that remind me of the long-lived SSL certificate problem. Updating is done so infrequently that the "how?" is forgotten. As the 10 year support limit approaches, most of the old team members who did it last time are gone, tech debt is through the roof, few people know where everything is or how to b…

That is a good point, however I've not heard of too many cases where organizations intentionally skip RHEL releases. Systems that are being actively developed do regularly upgrade through each RHEL release, and the 10 year support just lets them be lazy about how quickly they do so. The only systems I see intentionally riding out the 10+ year support are deprecated systems that are already announced to sunset by the…

>That is a good point, however I've not heard of too many cases where organizations intentionally skip RHEL releases. Systems that are being actively developed do regularly upgrade through each RHEL release, and the 10 year support just lets them be lazy about how quickly they do so.

Industry specific - but finance world, we still had straggling RHEL5 machines up until a year or two ago and still have a bunch of RHEL6 machines and have basically NO RHEL9. The vast majority of the machines are all sitting on RHEL7/8.

Re: What's wrong with enterprise Linux

#132

Post by ineedasername »

cylo wrote: post #88
gjvc wrote: post #73

[flagged]

Hi. Author here. I’m not a sockpuppet and genuinely have no affiliation with Oracle. It’s purely my own technical opinion. I only recently registered the site and set up the blog because I had nowhere else to post it and did not want to use a hosted platform like Medium. I was watching the recent Red Hat debacle from the sidelines and had some thoughts to put together about the general Enterprise Linux model.

Okay, that's fair, but do you kind of see how a shiny new domain name & blog with exactly one post and an anonymous author saying you can trust them because they're not affiliated with Oracle...

Can you see how that appeal for trust hasn't been built on firm ground?

Re: What's wrong with enterprise Linux

#133

Post by outworlder »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #121
darkhelmet wrote: post #7

There is another problem that wasn't covered in the article. The 10+ years of stability leads to behaviors and outcomes that remind me of the long-lived SSL certificate problem. Updating is done so infrequently that the "how?" is forgotten. As the 10 year support limit approaches, most of the old team members who did it last time are gone, tech debt is through the roof, few people know where everything is or how to b…

> LetsEncrypt did us a huge favor by forcing automation vs having the guy who knows how to update the SSL certs every 4.9 years and left 6 months ago. Not in my experience. There's still a guy who goes around and updates (manually) all the LetsEncrypt certificates every year.

> Not in my experience. There's still a guy who goes around and updates (manually) all the LetsEncrypt certificates every year.

LetsEncrypt certificates don't last for one year, they only last for 90 days, no exceptions. You may be thinking about something different.

Re: What's wrong with enterprise Linux

#134

Post by ineedasername »

lasermike026 wrote: post #79

This whole model is in decline. Most companies have moved to the cloud and are using kubernetes. If you're running servers a datacenter then you might use enterprise linux. You are probably using some kind of virtualization like ESX or Nutanix. You might be using k8s there too. The age of running your own linux servers is ending in a way.

>You are probably using some kind of virtualization like ESX or Nutanix.

Yes, and we spin up RHEL in them for some of our application servers.

Re: What's wrong with enterprise Linux

#135

Post by monkeywork »

ineedasername wrote: post #110

>Oracle Linux... set aside your automatic (and justified) repulsion I can't for two reasons: 1) The only way I avoid the repulsive side of Oracle in this is if I don't care about having a reliable guaranteed enterprise support contract. No one is going to have more expertise in how this distro is built & functions than Oracle, and that's the no-go zone. 2) It's not just about the current status of the project but als…

Lets not forget as well that as pointed out in this article OEL is essentially just a play at undercutting RHEL and is the main reason (imho) that RH/IBM took the steps they have over the last few months is because of OEL undercutting them (I think it had VERY VERY little to do with Rocky/Alma)

Re: What's wrong with enterprise Linux

#136

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

pydry wrote: post #129
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I'd like to see the RHEL stability model go away too and force people to complete their automation and solve the problems of being able to rebuilding on demand - and actually doing it. So how could this be accomplished? A Nix-OS style approach coupled with an immutable OS core? It is much harder to offer stability guarantees than to just publish updates in a rolling release fashion. And yet big organizations pay b…

It won't be. Not until comprehensive integration testing comes as standard. If you dont have comprehensive integration tests it's less risky just to not upgrade unless you really need to.

>> If you don't have comprehensive integration tests it's less risky just to not upgrade unless you really need to.

Exactly. Most of us do not have sqlite-level (https://www.sqlite.org/testing.html) testing so we just do the best we can with the resources we have.

This tends to make most "enterprise" shops risk-averse and the motto becomes "if it's not broke, don't fix it".

Re: What's wrong with enterprise Linux

#137

Post by noizejoy »

tosihakkeri wrote: post #102
weare138 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what stops Oracle from just pulling a Red Hat when people switch over to Oracle Linux? Oracle hasn't exactly proven itself to be trustworthy over the years and that's putting it lightly. I think we need a fully open source alternative to RHEL not bound to any company. Something akin to the Debian project that can serve as an upstream reference distro and repository.

> I think we need a fully open source alternative to RHEL not bound to any company I believe the problem is not that there wouldn’t be open source alternatives but that that’s not what enterprise wants. Enterprise wants a company behind the distribution.

But arguably, there's also a pretty large world that wants enterprise type of solutions (for some use cases) without being actual enterprises.

Or am I the only one?

Re: What's wrong with enterprise Linux

#138

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #81
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I'd like to see the RHEL stability model go away too and force people to complete their automation and solve the problems of being able to rebuilding on demand - and actually doing it. So how could this be accomplished? A Nix-OS style approach coupled with an immutable OS core? It is much harder to offer stability guarantees than to just publish updates in a rolling release fashion. And yet big organizations pay b…

ArchLinux-style rather thsn NixOS style. Just roll the updates when they are ready into your very own test, int, acc, and finally prod.

All those hours hunting for the reasons why something suddenly stopped working every two or three weeks need to be paid. So maintenance cost for Linux servers would either skyrocket or no updates would ever be done for years. There are very good reasons why rolling releases in infrastructure are basically a no-go.

Re: What's wrong with enterprise Linux

#139

Post by cylo »

ineedasername wrote: post #132
cylo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi. Author here. I’m not a sockpuppet and genuinely have no affiliation with Oracle. It’s purely my own technical opinion. I only recently registered the site and set up the blog because I had nowhere else to post it and did not want to use a hosted platform like Medium. I was watching the recent Red Hat debacle from the sidelines and had some thoughts to put together about the general Enterprise Linux model.

Okay, that's fair, but do you kind of see how a shiny new domain name & blog with exactly one post and an anonymous author saying you can trust them because they're not affiliated with Oracle... Can you see how that appeal for trust hasn't been built on firm ground?

Sure, I suppose. I've never been called a sockpuppet before so I'm simultaneously insulted but also...honored in an odd way?

Anyway, I'm not sure what else you'd have me do here. We all have to start somewhere. I put my thoughts out there under something I directly control and I'd rather people focus on the central thesis of the thoughts being proposed over resorting to personal attacks.

I'll continue posting small essays on relevant topics under the domain.

Re: What's wrong with enterprise Linux

#140

Post by civilitty »

voakbasda wrote: post #94
mfer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of all the places Linux runs. Planes, trains, and automobiles. Medical equipment. So many other places. Many places that don't have readily available network access. Yet, many "enterprises" need support here. If a medical device or train works but needs support for years and years, should someone be constantly updating Linux? What about the software that runs on Linux and is tested there? Considering just the m…

> If a medical device or train works but needs support for years and years, should someone be constantly updating Linux? What about the software that runs on Linux and is tested there? Yes. If you have embedded software in the field and it is running on hardware that has not reached its EOL, then you absolutely should be fixing bugs and vulnerabilities, doubly so when that hardware is attached to any kind of network,…

> If you have embedded software in the field and it is running on hardware that has not reached its EOL, then you absolutely should be fixing bugs and vulnerabilities, doubly so when that hardware is attached to any kind of network, and triply so when the software talks to some kind of cloud services.

Talk to Qualcomm and NXP and MediaTek and Broadcom and STMicroelectronics and....

Seriously, most of this is completely out of the product engineers' control. We can't update the hardware because our vendors (ALL of our vendors) control the kernel selection, almost never upstream, and never keep the board support packages up to date. Never.

IME the only exceptions to that rule are RaspberryPi (kinda sorta), AMD, and Intel. I only recently managed to finally extricate all my projects from Linux 2.6 which I considered a minor miracle. In 2023.

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