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June 30th, 2024, will bring the End of Life (EOL) of CentOS Linux (2023)

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Re: June 30th, 2024, will bring the End of Life (EOL) of CentOS Linux (2023)

#51

Post by bogwog »

behnamoh wrote: post #22

Well, Redhat has to make money somehow, so this decision is understandable. To me, open-source is about the open, transparent "culture" in which you commit to develop, not about putting things out there for free (as in free beer). Too many companies already benefiting from open-source packages (e.g., OpenCV) without giving anything back to the community.

> Well, Redhat has to make money somehow, so this decision is understandable.

RedHat has been making money for decades. The Centos rug pull was just a way to make more money at the expense of their users and the larger open source community.

It is impossible to justify a rug pull. By definition, it is a hostile, one-sided, trust-destroying, and underhanded move.

Re: June 30th, 2024, will bring the End of Life (EOL) of CentOS Linux (2023)

#52

Post by jacooper »

phpisthebest wrote: post #29
heywoodlh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that since Red Hat restricted the source availability for RHEL, Rocky is using the following loopholes to gain binary compatibility with RHEL: 1. Using OCI images of RHEL (i.e. on Docker Hub) 2. Using cloud server images of RHEL They outlined their plans for this in June of 2023[0]. Red Hat’s official stance is that downstream distros like Rocky or AlmaLinux should be basing off of CentOS Stream —…

I fail to see what separates Alma from CentOS Stream at this point The entire Propose of CentOS was Binary Compatibility with RHEL, largely for Vendor compliance reasons, if a vendor of a commercial software product validated RHEL 7 for their software running CentOS 7 was also supported Running CentOS Stream, or now Alma Linux would not be as their are no longer binary compatible with RHEL. the Hostility of IBM and R…

To be fair, rocky isn't on its own here. https://openela.org (CIQ=Rocky)

Re: June 30th, 2024, will bring the End of Life (EOL) of CentOS Linux (2023)

#54

Post by throw929612 »

Big thanks to the CentOS project, which probably did as much to improve the size and health of the EL ecosystem as any other single factor, and did much of that work long before any official association with Red Hat.

Much respect for the tenacity required to figure out how to bootstrap RHEL without its build system.

(Shout out to White Box Enterprise Linux as well!)

Re: June 30th, 2024, will bring the End of Life (EOL) of CentOS Linux (2023)

#55

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

heywoodlh wrote: post #17
keikobadthebad wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you be specific? Else it sounds like you're just FUDding it.

My understanding is that since Red Hat restricted the source availability for RHEL, Rocky is using the following loopholes to gain binary compatibility with RHEL: 1. Using OCI images of RHEL (i.e. on Docker Hub) 2. Using cloud server images of RHEL They outlined their plans for this in June of 2023[0]. Red Hat’s official stance is that downstream distros like Rocky or AlmaLinux should be basing off of CentOS Stream —…

>> Red Hat’s official stance is that downstream distros like Rocky or AlmaLinux should be basing off of CentOS Stream — that would allow all the EL distributions to contribute and use the same OS base

That stance goes contrary to the "everyone benefits" nature of free and open source software. It turns "everyone benefits" into "Red Hat / IBM profits". Why should the community contribute to Red Hat's bottom line if Red Hat refuses to contribute back to the community?

Rocky Linux's "going around Red Hat's back" is only necessary because of Red Hat's choice to not contribute back to the community.

If IBM wants to expand its AIX (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AIX) business, it can do so without tainting Red Hat.

Re: June 30th, 2024, will bring the End of Life (EOL) of CentOS Linux (2023)

#56

Post by bluedino »

For better or for worse, this has caused a lot of software vendors to drop RHEL/CentOS support. Many have started to offer Ubuntu support in it's place.

Most of them didn't even try to support stream. I'm not sure what the process behind that was.

CentOS was free, which is why we used it. Sure, our SAP boxes run RHEL but the other stuff doesn't. We started moving a lot of stuff to Ubuntu as well.

Now, Ubuntu is by no means perfect, snaps are annoying, etc. But Red Hat really angers me with their decisions during the last few years.

One example is removing OpenLDAP:

The openldap-servers package was removed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. The openldap-clients package is still shipped though.

If you use openldap-servers in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL7), you need to consider to change your LDAP server from OpenLDAP to Red Hat Directory Server (RHDS) in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (RHEL8).

RHDS is provided as an add-on subscription in RHEL8, so you need buy the subscriptions in addition to RHEL subscription.

https://access.redhat.com/solutions/3816971

Additionally, Red Hat support is so bad these days. It almost reminds me of Microsoft Technet forums of the past. Random 'techs' offering copy-paste solutions and the same bad information.

Re: June 30th, 2024, will bring the End of Life (EOL) of CentOS Linux (2023)

#57

Post by doublepg23 »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #55
heywoodlh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that since Red Hat restricted the source availability for RHEL, Rocky is using the following loopholes to gain binary compatibility with RHEL: 1. Using OCI images of RHEL (i.e. on Docker Hub) 2. Using cloud server images of RHEL They outlined their plans for this in June of 2023[0]. Red Hat’s official stance is that downstream distros like Rocky or AlmaLinux should be basing off of CentOS Stream —…

>> Red Hat’s official stance is that downstream distros like Rocky or AlmaLinux should be basing off of CentOS Stream — that would allow all the EL distributions to contribute and use the same OS base That stance goes contrary to the "everyone benefits" nature of free and open source software. It turns "everyone benefits" into "Red Hat / IBM profits". Why should the community contribute to Red Hat's bottom line if Re…

Accusing Red Hat of not contributing to the wider free software community is so off-base I’m not sure how to respond.

Is there a single large FOSS project who’s git history isn’t filled with @redhat.com ?

Re: June 30th, 2024, will bring the End of Life (EOL) of CentOS Linux (2023)

#58

Post by jtriangle »

BSDobelix wrote: post #53

This is really the time to make a decision, do you really need support..ehm sorry insurance? Then RedHat/Suse/Oracle if not, choose a trusted community distribution like Debian.

We moved everything to debian when Centos moved to a stretch release for 8, no regrets whatsoever, zero difference in stability, solved some niche hardware support issues.

Writing was on the wall back then tbh. Redhat can enjoy it's legacy bubble, I'll continue to enjoy not paying for free software.

Re: June 30th, 2024, will bring the End of Life (EOL) of CentOS Linux (2023)

#59

Post by bityard »

chasil wrote: post #44
0x6c6f6c wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another suitable option, which has handled the situation of Red Hat source RPM releases[1] quite a bit better imo, is Alma Linux. https://almalinux.org/ Similar goal, but is working more directly upstream with Red Hat[2] as opposed to the (as I last had read) undisclosed and non-open approach that Rocky Linux has taken. 1: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/furthering-evolution-centos-s... 2: https://almalinux.org/blog/f…

As I understand it, Alma is following the stream release, which is slightly upstream and less stable than RHEL. https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/07/29/0214234/almalinux-... Rocky and SUSE Liberty Linux aim to be bug-for-bug compatible with RHEL, which has become more difficult.

This is the first time I have heard of SUSE Liberty Linux as an alternative to RHEL... when I went searching for information on it, all I could find was the product page and some press releases.

It's hard to read between the lines of the marketing speak but it sounds like it's just a suite of paid support options for existing RHEL/CentOS deployments and not a RHEL derivative that one can just download and use. Unless I am missing something?

Re: June 30th, 2024, will bring the End of Life (EOL) of CentOS Linux (2023)

#60

Post by freedomben »

geerlingguy wrote: post #23
bombcar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the real rug-pull. Had they supported CentOS 8 for the full 10 years, and announced that starting with 9 it would be this useless rolling release, people would have been much more calm about the whole thing.

Yep. It would've been disappointing, but it wouldn't have knocked the bee hive off the tree, so to speak. The announcement came right after I had switched over all my stuff to target CentOS 8. If they had given me the runway to make it feel like all that work wasn't for nothing, I would've been okay taking a few years to slowly roll to something else.

Same. I mostly support what Red Hat has done (after many hours of listening to arguments and thinking about them. Not the prima facie arguments that they made which were PR BS and spin, but the real reasons that were only gotten to by podcast hosts that pushed back a bit. But the CentOS 8 rug pull was a bad move and IMHO is really hard to defend because it came down to a short-term profit grab to try to force people to buy RHEL. I think long-term profit motive is a good thing (within reason and without compromising the open source principles) as it keeps RHEL sustainable, but the rug pull of CentOS 8 was wrong.
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