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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

#231

Post by DarkmSparks »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #219
kondbg wrote: post #179

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, et…

> Devil's advocate: why should I choose this yet-to-exist distribution over something already existing, such as Oracle Linux? Because you want what CentOS was and this is basically going to be what CentOS was. Different name, different people, but same prinicple.

Theoretically Oracle Linux and CentOS are identical except the branding, except CentOS has been abandoned and Oracle is just getting started with OL.

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

#233

Post by that_guy_iain »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #176
that_guy_iain wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

The last time I worked with a ~8 year old server, it used to go through hard drives at a rate of 1 every 2 months. While we could replace them easily and it was RAID so there wasn't any data loss, I personally would've got fed up of replacing HDDs every couple of months.

Also, most of my experience is with rented dedicated servers and they just give me a new one completely so I never really see if they're fully scrapped.

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

#234

Post by bayindirh »

niea_11 wrote: post #224
bayindirh wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Devil's advocate: why should I choose this yet-to-exist distribution over something already existing, such as Oracle Linux? Because there's a whole ecosystem (HPC and Scientific computing to be exact) which depends on CentOS (not RHEL, not Oracle, not Ubuntu, not Debian) primarily. A CentOS compatible distribution is not some FOSS pride thing. IBM and RH really blew a sucker punch in this regard.

When you say that they depend on CentOS, are they using something CentOS-specific. Centos is supposed to be compatible with RHEL (minus the logos/trademarks) and shouldn't have additional fixes or features. ("bug for bug, feature for feature" <= centos wording :)). No?

CentOS don't have to have a specific feature to be preferred over RH. Being free in both beer and speech is important enough. People (incl. us) install 1000+ server clusters with CentOS. The absence of licensing fee allows us to buy more servers. The absence of licensing fee allows "small researchers" to have a verified platform to work with. If you don't have a verified platform, you cannot trust your results.

CentOS carries a legacy from Scientific Linux (which was RH compatible too) and has a lot of software packages developed for/on it. It might be a regular .tar.gz or RPM distribution but, they're validated and certified on CentOS. This is enough. Some middlewares used in collaborative projects (intentionally or unintentionally) search for CentOS signature. Otherwise installations fail spectacularly (or annoyingly, it depends).

I have to run my own application on every platform with a relatively simple test suite which checks results with 32 significant digit ground truth values. If these tests fail for a reason, then I can't trust my application's results for a particular problem. My code runs fast and it's relatively simple (since it's young). Some software packages' tests can run for days. It's not feasible to re-validate a software every time after compilation on a different set of libraries, etc. CentOS provides this foundation for free.

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

#235

Post by that_guy_iain »

DarkmSparks wrote: post #231
that_guy_iain wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Devil's advocate: why should I choose this yet-to-exist distribution over something already existing, such as Oracle Linux? Because you want what CentOS was and this is basically going to be what CentOS was. Different name, different people, but same prinicple.

Theoretically Oracle Linux and CentOS are identical except the branding, except CentOS has been abandoned and Oracle is just getting started with OL.

But Oracle Linux has a different principle really, no? I never think of Oracle and think "Making the paid software free".

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

#236

Post by joseph »

em500 wrote: post #190
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…

I share your disappointment. Out of 150+ comments so far, I believe there has not been a single technical comment about the actual work involved in building a version-pinned RHEL clone. Without any experience myself (beyond some kernel build maybe 10 years ago), I gathered (from https://wiki.centos.org/About/Building_8 ) that the majority of work involves manually de-branding the RHEL sources. This apparently can't b…

RHEL source RPMs can be downloaded from http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise. According to your link, CentOS doesn't use the source RPMs since 7 but uses git repos instead. I don't know where the git repos are located, however, or if it is still possible to build the whole OS from just the SRPMs.

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

#237

Post by emayljames »

hnarn wrote: post #203
ajsfoux234 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the same thing might happen with Rocky Linux as well :)

“Anything can happen” is not an argument. It’s about quantified risk.

Yes, and the 2 parties have very different motivates.

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

#238

Post by StillBored »

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.

RHEL and its derivatives are the only linux distribution which maintains binary compatibility over 10+ years while getting not only security updates but feature additions when possible.

This is something I don't think the wider community understands, nor do they understand the incredible amount of work it takes to back-port major kernel/etc features while maintaining a stable kernel ABI as well as userspace ABI. Every single other distribution stops providing feature updates within a year or two. So LTS, really means "old with a few security updates" while RHEL means, will run efficiently on your hardware (including newer than the distro) with the same binary drivers and packages from 3rd party sources for the entire lifespan.

AKA, its more a windows model than a traditional linux distro in that it allows hardware vendors to ship binary drivers, and software vendors to ship binary packages. That is a huge part of why its the most commonly supported distro for engineering tool chains, and a long list of other commercial hardware and software.

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

#239

Post by goshx »

wayneftw wrote: post #213
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…

Pffft. Imagine coming to a forum where people commonly give their opinions only to accuse them of "whining" and "entitlement" when they simply give an opinion that you don't like. As if questioning whether a project name is any good suddenly equates to an application to be an "idea guy" or a logo designer. If you don't like the majority opinion about something as trivial as a name, stop visiting this forum. Does that…

how meta

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

#240

Post by gvb »

Spivak wrote: post #221
gvb wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money. RHEL requires expensive licenses. CentOS was RHEL without the RedHat branding and without the expensive licensing. By design, there was a nearly complete overlap between RHEL and CentOS. By "repurposing" CentOS into a "rolling release", RedHat (IBM) has broken the overlap so CentOS (free licensing) no longer competes directly against RHEL (expensive licensing).

This is so misinformed it's funny. CentOS and RHEL will now be down to the compiler flags compatible since RHEL minor releases will now just be point-in-time forks of CentOS with security fixes and backports from, you guessed it, CentOS.

CentOS and RHEL will only be exactly the same at the moment when RHEL is a point-in-time fork of CentOS. As soon ad RHEL forks from CentOS, CentOS will roll forward and will no longer be exactly the same as RHEL.

Previously, CentOS was a rebuild of RHEL. In between RHEL releases, CentOS was exactly the same as RHEL. When RHEL had a release/fix/backpoint, CentOS trailed until it was rebuilt from the new RHEL source.

The "old" CentOS was exactly the same nearly always (nearly perfect overlap) and the "new" CentOS is exactly the same nearly never (almost no overlap).

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