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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)

#61

Post by heywoodlh »

throw0101d wrote: post #41
heywoodlh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I fail to see what separates Alma from CentOS Stream at this point I believe that AlmaLinux's approach is in-line with Red Hat's vision for downstream OS-es. Rocky's is not. I think a potential benefit to aligning with Red Hat's approach is that both AlmaLinux and Red Hat will be contributing fixes, improvements, etc. to CentOS Stream -- and any other OS-es that base off of CentOS Stream. And, nothing is preventing…

> I believe that AlmaLinux's approach is in-line with Red Hat's vision for downstream OS-es. Rocky's is not. What is in-line with users' vision?

At this point, I'm not sure why end users who care about Red Hat stability don't just use RHEL directly. Red Hat has multiple ways to take advantage of RHEL that involve no cost (that weren't available when the original CentOS project was conceived):

- Free developer licenses[0] (great if you're a home-labber, IIRC you can get up to 16, I think?)

- Red Hat UBI images[1]

I feel like most users of AlmaLinux won't see a huge difference between just using AlmaLinux's release cycle vs RHEL -- especially since AlmaLinux will be ABI compatible with RHEL. I.E. apps that work for RHEL should work for AlmaLinux.

So, back to your original question, I don't know what end-users want more of other than as was said by mrweasel in a different comment: "that's not what some people want, they specifically want RHEL, but for free".

[0] https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2021/02/10/how-to-activat...

[1] https://developers.redhat.com/products/rhel/ubi

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

#62

Post by ramesh31 »

bluedino wrote: post #56

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…

>But Red Hat really angers me with their decisions during the last few years.

Probably because Red Hat is no longer making those decisions

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

#63

Post by dralley »

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…

Your analysis seems to be ignoring all of the work required to create and maintain the CentOS Stream / RHEL distribution in the first place, which is substantial.

Prior to CentOS Stream, if you were a CentOS user or maintainer who experienced a bug, your only option was to file a bug on the RHEL bug tracker and wait for a Red Hat employee to fix it for you. It was the Android-esque "throw the code over the wall" model of open source.

Post CentOS Stream, a CentOS user or maintainer files the bug in the CentOS Stream bug tracker, can write a patch and have it reviewed by other users/maintainers/Red Hat employees tracking the issue, and then benefit from Red Hat QA'ing the fix.

So counter to your claim, I would argue that the CentOS Stream model provides more bidirectional / mutual benefits.

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

#64

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

doublepg23 wrote: post #57
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 ?

Oh, so is it okay to share RHEL sources back with the original project communities or not?

If you share RHEL sources with the original project communities, what happens?

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

Does this give Red Hat the right to effectively "close source" the code for RHEL despite contributions from the rest of the community?

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

#65

Post by op00to »

bluedino wrote: post #56

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…

> this has caused a lot of software vendors to drop RHEL/CentOS support

Can you list a few? It's good to keep up to date on how this is changing. Thanks!

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

#66

Post by bityard »

throw929612 wrote: post #54

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!)

Scientific Linux was one of my favorites for a while. I stumbled onto it back when some important CentOS leader went missing and the future of the whole project looked uncertain.

SL7 is still supported until June 2024. The maintainers decided not to do SL8 and are now contributing to AlmaLinux instead.

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

#67

Post by verdverm »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #5

Rocky Linux is a fine successor to CentOS and was created by one of the original founders of CentOS, Gregory Kurtzer. https://rockylinux.org/ https://rockylinux.org/about/ If you need enterprise support RHEL tends to be a default choice. If you cannot afford RHEL or do not need enterprise support, Rocky Linux fills the role that CentOS once did.

I'm doing this migration right now, first task of the year.

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

#68

Post by syntheticnature »

bluedino wrote: post #56

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…

Part of it was that CentOS Stream reversed the CentOS stability level vs. Fedora; a lot of the vendors targeting CentOS/RHEL were looking for something fairly fixed. CentOS made sure they could also support folks who didn't want to pay for RHEL.

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

#69

Post by b112 »

bluedino wrote: post #56

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…

I am always baffled by people using ubuntu because "free".

I get the desire if you want the paid stream. EG, an alternative to Redhat or SuSE as a paid stream.

But if you're going to use Ubuntu, why put up with the snaps, the commercialism, the app store, when you can just use debian?

Every time I hear a reason why, it makes little sense to me. Even though 95% of Ubuntu is Debian, and Ubuntu wouldn't exist without Debian.... people use it.

Ah well.

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

#70

Post by bityard »

behnamoh wrote: post #25
klysm wrote: post #10

Long live Debian

Does `apt` handle packages as cleanly as `dnf` and `yum`? Last time I tried `apt`, it would uninstall apps without cleaning after itself.

It will not automatically remove dependencies that were installed along with a package when that package is removed. I'm guessing this is due to some historical ideology about how `apt-get` was intended to function. I just typically run `apt remove foobar && apt -y autoremove`.

There is also nala, which _does_ automatically remove dependencies when you remove a package: https://github.com/volitank/nala

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