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Rocky Linux: A CentOS replacement by the CentOS founder

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

#171

Post by tw04 »

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.

Rocky is going to be exactly what CentOS was: a free version of RHEL. The reason you would use this vs. Debian or Ubuntu is because you've got systems that need to mirror your production, but you don't want/need enterprise support on them.

When I worked for a hardware vendor we had customers who ran hundreds of CentOS boxes in dev/test alongside their production RHEL boxes. If there was an issue with a driver, we simply asked that they reproduce it on RHEL (which was easy to do). If they had been running debian or ubuntu LTS the answer would have been: I suggest you reach out the development mailing list and seek out support there.

Whether you like it or not, most hardware vendors want/require you to have an enterprise support contract on your OS in order to help with driver issues.

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

#174

Post by bonzini »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #36
joana035 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the price one pays are outdated packages. CentOS 8 was released few days ago with kernel 4.18, which not even LTS is, and is older than the current Debian stable kernel(!). If you need to install anything besides the base distro you need elrepo, epel, etc which I'm not sure can be counted as part of the support.

The patch delta for security fixes must get larger over time as these packages age further and further away from top of tree. I always wonder how many major vulnerabilities are introduced into these super old distros due to backporting bugs.

It's the opposite. Plenty of subsystems in the RHEL 8.3 kernel are basically on par with upstream 5.5 or so, as almost all the patches are backported. The source code is really the same to a large extent, and therefore security fixes apply straightforwardly.

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

#175

Post by goodpoint »

jeremymcanally wrote: post #133
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…

“The loudest mouths are often attached to the idlest hands.” - ancient open source software proverb (It’s not ancient. I made it up. But it’s sadly true.)

It's very true and for a basic reason - one minute spent doing is one minute taken away from talking/writing.

This is the reason why many excellent projects remain obscure while marketing-driven products become famous... and often take credit for other people's ideas.

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

#176

Post by bcrosby95 »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #130
joana035 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arguably, no one should be running a server that long in 2020 The main reason people choose Linux is due to its stability. It is totally ok to run servers in 2020. Also your statement seems the default cloud vendor lingo used to push people to adopt proprietary technology with high vendor lock-in.

Honestly, 10 years is a long time for a server. I would be honestly surprised if a server lasted 10 years. But I agree I also get the tone of "servers should be cattle and not pets, just kill them and build a new one". Which can also be done on bare metal if you're using vms/containers. It seems like most people forget these cloud servers need to run on bare metal.

Really? We've colocated our servers for the past 18 or so years.

We have about 40. The oldest is around 17 years old. Our newest server is 9 years old. Our average server age is probably around 13 years old.

The most common failure that completely takes them out of commission is a popped capacitor on the motherboard. Never had it happen before the 10 year mark.

Never had memory failure. Have had disk failures, but those are easy to replace. Had one power supply failure, but it was a faulty batch and happened within 2 years of the server's life.

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

#177

Post by orev »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #83
orev wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This distro is meant for servers, or maybe long term stable desktops you’d want in a classroom or something like that. People running servers don’t need any of the stuff you mentioned.

CentOS was free RHEL. RHEL is not intrinsically a "server" OS. I developed on a RHEL workstation at my previous job. I'm not sure where the idea that CentOS is for servers came from.

I didn’t say you can’t use it on a desktop, just that it’s not really what it’s meant for. The issues outlined above, like sleep, Bluetooth, etc. aren’t the main things focused on.

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

#178

Post by hibbelig »

Karunamon wrote: post #105
moonbug wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Arguably, no one should be running a server that long in 2020. That's mental.

My read on that is that you should be treating your servers as disposable and ephemeral as possible. Long uptimes mean configuration drift, general snowflakery, difficulties patching, patches getting delayed/not done, and so forth. Ideally you'd never upgrade your software in the usual way. You'd simply deploy the new version with automated tooling and tear down the older.

I don't get this. If there are many servers, sure. But if it's something that runs on a single box without problem, why on earth should I tear it down?

Also, "running a server for ten years" does not need to mean that it has ten years of uptime. I think that wasn't meant.

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

#179

Post by kondbg »

Devil's advocate: why should I choose this yet-to-exist distribution over something already existing, such as Oracle Linux?

The most common argument (Oracle is evil and litigious. Therefore, using Oracle Linux will result in me being sued) honestly seems like FUD.

All RHEL downstream distributions rebuild the same SRPMs that RHEL provides. Doing a quick comparison over some common packages (kernel, httpd, openssl, etc.) between CentOS 8.3 (https://vault.centos.org/8.3.2011/BaseOS/Source/SPackages/) Oracle Linux 8.3 (https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL8/baseos/latest/x8...) shows that they are indeed byte identical (with the exception of certain spec files including debranding patches).

What is the value of having a separate RHEL derivative? It isn't as if the "community" can propose/submit any changes, since any changes will cease to make the downstream distribution a "bug for bug" compatible RHEL derivative. If I actually wanted to participate in the larger RHEL-derivative community, I would need to actually submit my changes to the CentOS stream project.

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

#180

Post by eggman314 »

tus88 wrote: post #151
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…

What's wrong with the name? It seems fairly uncontroversial to me.

In some contexts rocky is synonymous with unstable or unreliable, so I assume that's the issue some people have.
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